Detroit Lions' Hendon Hooker shined on a dismal night against the Giants

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – Ask Isaiah Williams what Hendon Hooker told the team before the game and he’ll swear he doesn’t remember. And it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes, Williams said Thursday night in the visiting locker room at MetLife Stadium, it’s not about the words, it’s about how the words impact you, how they make you feel.

“I knew (the words) were getting me ready to play,” the Illinois rookie receiver said.

Hooker gave his team the vibe during the Lions’ first preseason game against the New York Giants. Before the game in the locker room. In the pregame meeting when he finally walked onto the field to start the second half.

The Lions’ second-year player made his NFL debut against the Giants, a year and three months after being selected in the third round of the draft out of Tennessee. Unfortunately for Hooker, the debut was cut short when he suffered a concussion, almost certainly during one of his careers.

Hooker enters the league’s concussion protocol as the Lions enter the Hooker era. Now, he’s a long way from being a starter in this league and may never make it.

But on Thursday night he outclassed his competition (Nate Sudfeld) at backup quarterback and, though he only played two series, showed glimpses of a tantalizing future. He also demonstrated why he could be out of the league in a few years.

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Not because he doesn’t have talent, which he clearly does, but because he can run, he likes to run, and he didn’t take advantage of the NFL rule that allows quarterbacks in the open field to slide without being tackled.

“He’s going to have to learn to be selective,” Dan Campbell said, “… to slide, (to do) some of these things if he’s going to use his legs more.”

The ability to run, to escape, Campbell said, is “good. It gets you out of trouble. But that’s the downside, you get yourself open to hits. I think being able to do some of that would be good for his game, but certainly, we need to limit that. … He’s got to play in the pocket. He’s got to make some throws in there.”

All of that is true. Especially if he’d like to play beyond his rookie contract, or even beyond this month.

However, there is this:

“He moved the ball.”

Campbell also said the same thing when asked what else he saw in Hooker other than his willingness to throw himself at the type of defenders he didn’t have to worry about in Tennessee.

“That’s really the best thing I can say so far,” Campbell said after the Lions lost their preseason opener 17-3. “I was moving the ball.”

And isn’t that the point?

Look, you can dissect his pitches, his accuracy, you can dissect his reads, look at his decision making like you would look at banks selling interest rates, and all of that is necessary and critical; without improving all three, he would never fully take advantage of that arm strength, speed and charisma anyway.

But Campbell’s assessment is the essence of running an offense, isn’t it? And it poses the fundamental question of a quarterback:

Will he be able to move the team?

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And secondly:

Can he lead a team?

Or maybe that shouldn’t be secondary. Maybe it’s in the same place as that hard-to-describe ability a quarterback has to move the ball.

Williams couldn’t put it into words. Hell, he couldn’t even remember Hooker’s words when he spoke to the team in the locker room before the game. But we’re talking about something intangible, something that, as Williams passionately pointed out, is buried in the nonverbal language between human beings.

“You can feel it,” Williams said. “He brings fire.”

The Lions changed the moment he stepped onto the field. Up until that point, the offense had been a slog. The rain didn’t help. Sudfeld’s rust didn’t help either: Like Hooker, he also missed last season due to a knee injury.

Williams said the meeting changed the moment Hooker walked in. He made his teammates believe, even though he didn’t have an NFL resume that gave them reason to believe.

That’s an aura trick. Hooker has one. That’s indisputable.

“Hendon is a special guy,” Williams said, “a special leader. He’s a guy that took me under his wing over the summer. He would take me and Jalon Calhoun, another rookie receiver, and also Kaden Davis, out to lunch and run some routes at a local high school. (He’s) someone I’ll be following for sure.”

Whether he has what it takes to become a difference-maker in this league is a story that needs time to unfold. But he has that essential quality to be a quarterback.

“Man,” said Williams, who earned a shout-out from Campbell after a four-catch night and some neat plays, “you know what it’s like when people have that certain swagger? (It’s) easy for everybody else to play along. He brings that kind of energy that a team needs.”

It’s a rare trait, even by NFL standards, and it’s partly why Brad Holmes selected him. Here’s Holmes after the 2023 draft:

“There were little things that stood out to me, like when he would score a touchdown and instead of being on the bench with his headphones on or talking to the coach, he would be standing on the sideline waiting to congratulate his team who had made the extra point. It’s those little things that show you what kind of person he was.”

Oh, and Holmes liked his talent, too. He wasn’t looking to recruit a locker room counselor. And Holmes knows Hooker won’t blossom unless he combines that talent with instant, high-level processing. As Campbell said, he’ll eventually have to prove he can stay in the pocket and then choose when it’s best to leave him.

That’s the big question, isn’t it? But that’s the fundamental question with so many draft picks. It’s a bet that the gifts will eventually meet the intelligence.

But in one series, on a rainy Thursday night in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the young man from Tennessee lit up the locker room, the huddle and brought some energy to a dull game. He broke away a few times, made some defenders miss, tried to run over a few others.

He also threw a few pitches and would almost certainly say he wished he had thrown more. Then it was over and he disappeared into the medical tent. Shortly afterward he slipped away and headed to the locker room.

He has a lot to learn to make sure he doesn’t routinely take that walk, because if he does, at some point he’ll stop doing it. The Lions are betting he’ll figure it out.

That’s the bet. On Thursday night, we got to see why the Lions took the bet.

Contact Shawn Windsor at [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

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