Open thread: What if Hendon Hooker is good?

If Hendon Hooker ends up being good, Brad Holmes would be faced with one of his toughest decisions yet.

Featuring the likes of Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta, and Brian Branch, Detroit’s 2023 draft class helped propel the Lions to their first NFC Championship Game in decades. But there’s one player from that group who has yet to see the field, and he could be the difference between this class being really good and historically great.

In the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft, the Detroit Lions selected quarterback Hendon Hooker—a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate during his final season at Tennessee before tearing his ACL—with the 68th overall pick. Despite the fact that Detroit had just finished the season on an 8-2 run and had other positions to shore up like cornerback and offensive line, general manager Brad Holmes elected to use a valuable third-round pick on Hendon Hooker.

Typically, teams who have a franchise quarterback in the prime of their career, or at least believe they have a viable, long-term solution at the position, don’t just go spending Day 2 picks on quarterback prospects. With some help from Kent Lee Platte, Pride of Detroit alum and creator of RAS, we noticed that since the year 2000, just 10% of quarterbacks drafted in rounds 2 and 3 have been “hits” for the team that originally drafted them—Drew Brees, Andy Dalton, Derek Carr, Jalen Hurts, and Russell Wilson.

Hooker wasn’t going to be medically ready to play for at least a couple months into his rookie season due to an ACL injury, but it didn’t matter considering this pick was made with the future in mind. It also didn’t matter because Jared Goff went out and proved the final 10-game stretch in 2022 wasn’t a fluke, helping lead the offense to 12 wins and coming 30 minutes shy of reaching the Super Bowl in the following season.

Without much in the way of weapons and plopped smack dab into a rebuild, Goff had a disappointing debut season with the Lions, providing little reason to believe he was anything but a means to an end. But with talent surrounding him in the form of a topflight offensive line and versatile skill players to spearhead a diversified offense, Goff proved wholly capable of steering the ship.

The bootstrap quarterback who does it all on their own is a myth—or an alien, so don’t confuse this for an anti-Goff piece. In fact, I’m pretty sold on him being a net-positive for a football team that supports him by regularly investing in dynamic skill players. And that’s what most teams—successful teams, even!—do to get the best version of their quarterback. So, again, this isn’t an indictment on Detroit’s No. 1 quarterback, but simply a curiosity.

Today’s Question of the Day comes from something that isn’t mutually exclusive with Goff being a viable, starting quarterback in the NFL.

What if Hendon Hooker is good?

Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise? The quarterback drafted just in case Goff didn’t prove he was the guy ends up being another hit for Holmes and Co. What happens then?

I’m not suggesting the Lions abandon Goff at the first sign of promise from Hooker, but it’s an interesting conundrum to consider. The old adage from John Madden—“If you have two quarterbacks, you actually have none”—need not apply here because Goff has proven to be a capable one, especially in his current situation.

Most quarterbacks would love to be in the position the Lions have built around Goff because here’s the reality of the situation: Detroit’s offense is chock-full of young talent that still has yet to realize their ceiling, and that’s not narrow-focused bias. On a recent episode of “The Edge with Micah Parsons,” C.J. Stroud was challenged by Parsons to pick 11 current players on offense and draw up his best play for a fourth-and-3 scenario. Not only did Stroud pick Lions newcomer Kevin Zeitler—“my guy from the Ravens, number 70”—but he also chose Gibbs to be his running back next to him out of shotgun. On top of that, the Lions just extended both Amon-Ra St. Brown and Penei Sewell, two foundational pieces for an offense built to last. It took three offseasons, but Jameson Williams is finally going to get a normal offseason—no injuries, no suspensions—so hopefully he and Goff can be on the same page from Week 1. We could be having a discussion in six months about how LaPorta is the best tight end in football. This Lions offense is stacked.

But again, if Hooker shows great promise, what’s the plan of action? Is he an asset to be dealt for picks from a quarterback-needy team? At 26 years old and just three years left on his rookie contract, there isn’t much runway for him to land as an eventual starter on a very cheap contract, and since there’s no real path to Hooker being a starter in 2024, that leaves him 27 years old with just two years left on his deal. We know Holmes can be somewhat unconventional when it comes to his approach to the draft, but without the benefit of hindsight, drafting a player at 68—whom they’d be happy with being a clipboard holder/emergency option during his rookie contract—seems like a luxury pick akin to drafting Eric Ebron in the top ten.

Again, there’s no real serious path for Hooker to start this year, but I’m not suggesting he should be traded, or he should get an honest chance to start immediately—we don’t even know if he’s good yet! All I want to know is what are the Lions going to do if he ends up having an impressive training camp? How much leash will there be if Goff has another month of football like last year’s Weeks 10-13? How much does the Lions brass believe in Goff? That much can be measured by the terms of his impending extension. The length and guarantees of the deal will tell us everything we need to know about how Detroit feels about Hooker—and how Detroit plans to build a sustainable roster around their quarterback moving forward.

Your turn.