2023 NFL Draft QBs: Hendon Hooker is the hardest projection in this draft class

There is no player harder to project in the entire draft than the Tennessee signal caller.

While the Green Bay Packers likely won’t be selecting one of the top quarterbacks in this draft, we shouldn’t rule it out, just on the off chance that one of them falls like a certain quarterback did back in 2005. All of the top prospects have some significant defect, and while it’s a near certainty that most will go in the top 6, it wouldn’t surprising to see at least one take a plunge. I’d wager that Will Levis in particular is a huge candidate to plummet come draft day.

But, while the Packers almost certainly won’t take a quarterback high in this draft, they will almost certainly take a quarterback. With Rodgers gone (or at least about to be), they’ll need to refresh the room a bit and start bringing in low-key Jordan Love backup plans, in addition to a likely veteran clipboard holder. Along those lines, we should take a look at the possible day-2 and day-3 candidates, where no one is more interesting or more controversial than Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker.

Positive: The Stats

During my tenure at Acme Packing Company I’ve had the privilege of being exposed to a group of wonderful writers with a ton football experience that I frankly just don’t have. In that time I’ve learned how to watch film (at least at the skill positions), as well as learn the intricacies of offensive schemes and players’ roles in them that I simply didn’t care about before.

In my youth, I would have been beating down the door to hype Hendon Hooker, because his numbers are just that good. We’ll get to the substantial negatives in a second, but I wonder sometimes if I second guess my own numbers now more than is warranted and whether I fall victim to the same scouting biases I’ve railed against in the past. I remember, during the Jordan Love draft, how much everyone loved receiver Jalen Reagor, while my WROPS/WRAPS ratings saw him as an obvious flop. There, in my receiver previews I think I gave too much deference to Reagor proponents, and while I made my case known, I do regret not making it stronger.

And so with that in mind, let us start with stats-based praise. Hooker was, by far, the best quarterback in college football this season, no matter how you slice it. He was 5^th overall in completion percentage, but blew everyone ahead of him away in terms of yards per completion (13.7). His QBOPS slash line of .411/.671/.1.081 is truly elite, and Hooker barely ever throws an interception, with just 5 combined over the past two seasons. For a quarterback to do so much damage downfield while taking such good care of the ball is almost unprecedented.

His 124 unadjusted QwOBA led all of college football, easily clearing second-place C.J. Stroud. Adjusting for defenses faced puts Hooker and Stroud in a tier by themselves at 128, well clear of Stetson Bennett at 122. While Stroud faced a truly elite gauntlet of opposing defenses (4^th-most difficult overall), Hooker was right there with him (7th overall), even without the final game against Clemson which he missed with an injury. And when factoring in the quality of their wide receivers, Hooker distances himself from Stroud again, 126 to 118.

Much the same could be said about Hooker in 2021, where he also finished first in QwOBA+ (which adjusts for quality of defenses faced and for quality of receivers). He scored a 127 overall, edging C.J. Stroud and Stetson Bennett, who tied at 121. Hooker has been extremely consistent as an upperclassman.

I also think his receiver adjustments are more or less correct. Stroud did have elite NFL talent catching his passes in 2021, and likely in 2022. Hooker, on the other hand, had Velus Jones in 2021 as well as Cedric Tillman, who was great in 2021, but regressed due to injuries in 2022, and in any case, isn’t as strong as any of the Ohio State receivers.

In 2022 the Tennessee receiving corps was led by Jalin Hyatt, who had easily the best statistical season of any receiver in college football and will likely be drafted quite high. However, it’s worth noting that PFF’s grades give much of that credit not to Hyatt (78.2), but to Hooker (90.8), and that Hyatt’s grade isn’t much different than Jones’ or Tillman’s from last season (75.4, 78.5 respectively).

(Note: I love Hyatt and his WROPS was easily the best in college football in 2022, so grains of salt all around.)

PFF grades aren’t everything of course, especially at the college level, but it’s worth considering just how good Hooker was with Velus Jones as a major part of the offense, and how interchangeable the Volunteer receivers seem to be.

Finally, before we move into the negatives, there is one factor that makes me higher on Hooker than any other single fact. One of the big negatives for Hooker is the style of offense that Tennessee plays, and how poorly it tends to translate to pro ball. That negative should be at least partially mitigated by Hooker’s pre-transfer performance during the Covid-shortened 2020 season with Virginia Tech, where he posted a still-impressive QBOPS slash line of .385/.670/1.055 and ranked 14^th overall in QwOBA+ at 111. Even his 2019 sophomore season was well above average, though he didn’t throw enough to qualify.

We’ve seen Hooker succeed in multiple systems, and he’s been as accurate and as explosive as the Youngs and Strouds of the world. So what’s not to like exactly?

The Negatives: Scheme, Age and Injuries

Let’s start with the Tennessee offense itself, one of the many college offenses you’ll hear described as “quarterback friendly.” To understand why this can be a bad thing for the pro prospects of the quarterback running it, I might suggest we refer to such schemes as “coach-heavy” instead. Much of the Tennessee offense comes from the sidelines, and while the players have to execute, the reads they have to make and the plays they’re called on to execute are often simple compared to typical NFL schemes.

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel is a descendent of the Art Briles, Baylor “Veer and Shoot” offense, and there are several factors that make the offense tricky from an evaluation perspective. First, like most Air Raid variants, the Tennessee offense uses tempo to limit opposing substitutions. This strategy works quite well, but it does come at the cost of complexity and precision. The goal is to catch a defense in an unfortunate personnel package and hit on a weakness repeatedly, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, the schematic advantage comes from the sideline at the cost of running a more complex offense.

The second big factor that works so well in college while doing a disservice to Hooker has to do with the extremes of the passing game. The offense relies heavily on quick screen-style throws when the defense plays off, or bombs when the defense is caught in a slower package, or playing aggressively with not much in between, and both styles of throw are more receiver-dependent than many of the intermediate and out throws common to the NFL. Screens and short throws by their nature rely on YAC, and deep shots just need to be accurate enough to give the receiver a chance to adjust. You can find several instances of Hooker hanging that ball way up for wide open deep receivers last season, and forcing them to slow down or come back to make the reception. Those are poor throws that resulted in big gains anyway, all thanks to a scheme that routinely busts coverages.

And third, the Heupel/Briles offense exploits a quirk in the college game that is not present in the pro game, that being the hashes. Because the college hashes are significantly wider than the NFL hashes, there is often more space available (and more to defend) on one side of the field. The deep passing game of Tennessee is very much based on a “throw to space” philosophy, and that space is unique to college football. The hash difference between the NFL and NCAA doesn’t get talked about enough as having a major impact on the game, and it is one of the major reasons college offenses are so much more varied than their NFL counterparts.

Hooker, to his credit, is a good and strong enough quarterback to exploit the space in the deep reaches of the secondary, but many of those throws simply won’t be available to him at the next level, especially without better mechanics and a little more mustard on the ball.

I mentioned earlier that the biggest factor in Hooker’s favor is his success in two college systems. It’s important to keep this in mind as a counter to the Heupel-based criticism above, but it’s just as important as evidence of his ability to learn a new system quickly. In the NFL, he’ll have no choice.

I normally don’t care about the age of a prospect, but here, it matters. The Covid extra eligibility rule means we have more old prospects than ever before, and while Hooker isn’t even the oldest quarterback in the draft (Stetson Bennett is slightly older), he’s still quite aged at 25. Age matters more for the “athletic-based” positions of tight end, running back, corner, and edge, but there are two major reasons it’s an issue for Hooker:

1. As a 24-year old playing against 19-21 year-olds, you enjoy a distinct maturity advantage.
2. Hooker’s ACL tear means he likely won’t play a meaningful snap of professional football until he’s 26 at the earliest.

If Hooker was coming from a pro-style system this would all matter less, as he could plausibly walk onto a team as a potential starter from the moment he’s healthy enough to play. Coming from Tennessee, though, you need to project some development time to learn and develop the soft skills necessary for success in an NFL system, and Hooker doesn’t have time. You simply cannot have a project quarterback getting started as a 28-year old.

Finally, because of that ACL tear, we also don’t have a good idea about Hooker’s athletic profile, and there’s reason to believe he is only a fair athlete. On tape he doesn’t pop as an elite runner like Bryce Young, and while he is mobile and did some damage running the ball, he’s probably not a plus athlete, especially for the next few seasons post-ACL. This matters a great deal because Hooker was one of the worst quarterbacks in football at avoiding sacks, posting a Justin Fields-like 29% pressure-to-sack percentage in 2022. That is horrible, and this statistic tends to track from college to the pros.

That 29% number also makes sense when you consider how Hooker plays the game. He is, fundamentally, a “big game hunter,” willing to eat the ball versus making a risky, interceptible pass. Big game hunters are efficient, but they take a lot of hits, and Hooker let himself take shots far too frequently in college. Given his college numbers, at the next level he’s likely to look like Justin Fields without the elite running to compensate, and that’s a huge problem.

Where Should Hooker Go?

There’s almost no consensus on where to put Hooker in this draft, and that actually makes a lot of sense. He possesses some traits that are difficult to teach, in his elite accuracy and an explosive downfield game. Heupel was previously the head coach at Central Florida where he led a similarly explosive offense, but quarterback Dillon Gabriel never put up accuracy numbers like Hooker’s. The Heupel-Briles quarterback that comes closest to Hooker is almost certainly Robert Griffin III, who posted a .427/.723/1.150 QBOPS slash line in 2011 for Baylor, and it’s that completion percentage that I think distinguishes Hooker and Griffin from a guy like Bryce Petty, who succeeded RG3 and posted a .366/.823/.1.189 slash line in 2013. The difference between Petty’s 62% completion percentage and Hooker’s 69.6% (and RG3’s 72.4%) is enormous.

That’s not to say Hooker can be RG3, especially considering the state of his ACL, and even before the injury he never had that kind of mobility, but RG3 was a good passer in addition to being a good runner, and in many cases, accuracy simply wins out.

There has been some buzz about Hooker as a late first, or early second round selection, but that seems far too high. Above everything else, there are just too many unknowns about this profile, and in the draft, unknown’s cause discounts, especially when paired with age and injury. Age and injuries are huge risks, and objective ones, and Hooker should be dinged for them. Even if he works out, any team selecting him will lose value on the back end that they would otherwise have from drafting one of the younger options. If you’re counting on Hooker as a franchise quarterback, you’re making a mistake.

All of that said, Hooker’s experience in multiple programs, his maturity, and his knowledge of the concepts of high-powered college offense give him a solid floor as a clipboard-holding backup, with some upside. You don’t spend a high pick on that profile, of course, but if you determine, through interviews, that he can provide you with the same level of veteran stewardship at non-veteran prices, it can be worth a few million in cap savings.

Let’s finish with that upside. I don’t think RG3 is a great comp, he’s just the one other accurate passer to play in an Art Briles system. I think my favorite high-upside comp for Hooker is actually Kurt Warner, and it’s not just because Hooker will likely not see the field until he’s at an advanced age. Hooker’s pressure to sack numbers are worrying, but they are also emblematic of a guy willing to wait until the last minute to get the deep shot, along the lines of how the Greatest Show on Turf often required Warner to take those hits while Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce got themselves into the deep secondary. The accuracy is there, and the poise under pressure is there.

All of that said, you’re likely not getting Warner, and comping anyone to Warner or Brady is uniformly a terrible idea. But having a capable backup who displayed elite college accuracy, and who maybe has something like a 5% chance of becoming special is certainly worth a 5^th rounder or later. I might even dip into the 4^th.