Being the Lions beat writer here at AtoZ Sports, I obviously spend a lot of my day on Lions Twitter. One of the things that I have seen nonstop since November 29th is fans trying to find some sort of scenario in which Hendon Hooker could take the field for the Lions.
The latest one is the idea that if the Lions lose to the Cowboys on Saturday and a couple other things happen, the Lions will be locked into the third seed and will have nothing to play for in Week 18. So why not put Hooker out there? Here’s the thing. It’s not going to happen. I won’t say its a 100% certainty, but it’s a 99.9% certainty that Hendon Hooker does not play a snap of football this season. Here’s the reasons why:
He just started practicing
The Lions started Hooker’s 21 day clock on November 29th. He’s practiced 13 times this year. That’s it. That’s all the time he’s had to practice being an NFL player. He’s also spent a lot of that time just working in. He’s not out there with the ones going good on good or anything. He’s doing a lot of drills and working with the second team. He needs more time to learn what he’s doing out there with this team. Reading the playbook is one thing, but actually doing it is another.
The Lions weren’t sure they were going to activate him
The Lions started his 21 day clock on November 29th and took it all the way down to the wire. He was activated on the 20th day. Lions head coach Dan Campbell was unsure that was going to happen a week earlier.
“We would love him to get him on, so we can continue to work with him here because otherwise, you can’t do anything. But, ultimately, yeah, I don’t think we can commit to that until we see what’s going on here and what pieces we think are coming back.”
The Lions were considering putting him on season ending injured reserve if they felt they needed the extra space badly enough. They ultimately decided to activate him the day before his clock wore out. That doesn’t sound like a situation where a team feels a player is totally ready to go on the field for live reps.
He hasn’t played a down of football in over a year
Hooker’s last snap of live football was played on November 19th, 2022. That’s well over a year ago now. I agree that he needs time on the field to get back into the swing of things, but Week 18 against a team that could still be in the playoff hunt just isn’t the place to do it. The right time and place to do it would be during training camp when he get on the field for three preseason games in a row after working with the team all summer long.
What would it matter now?
For me it’s also a logic thing. I get that you really want to see him and again, I get that he needs time. But what are we talking about here? A quarter or two of football and then what? It’s Week 18. He’d get a quarter or two of football and then head right back down to the bench for the playoffs and he wouldn’t see the field again until preseason. So why even waste your time? There’s no continuity there. It’s just two quarters then months of nothing instead of three quarters, a week of camp and then three more quarters. It just makes so much more sense to wait.
Teddy Bridgewater
If you had Tim Boyle and David Blough as the Lions backups, I can see maybe trying this out early. I still wouldn’t think they would do it, but the case to do it would be better. That’s not who they have. They have Teddy Bridgewater. Possibly the best backup quarterback in the league. If anyone is getting out there for a couple quarters of meaningless football, its the guy that would be doing it against his former team in the last regular season game of his career.
Just be patient everyone. I’m interested to see what he can do too. It’s just not feasible that this is something the Lions would do this year. August will be fun. We’ll talk about it then.