The Lions drafted quarterback Hendon Hooker in the third round last year, but he never took the field as a rookie. And as long as Jared Goff stays healthy, Hooker may never see the field.
But if the Lions need Hooker, they want to be confident he’ll be ready to run the offense, Lions coach Dan Campbell says.
“We need to feel like by the end of camp this guy can, he can run this offense,” Campbell said, via MLive.com. “He’s somebody we know that, man, we can play the game a certain way with him. We know he’s going to be able to process the information, he’s going to get us in the right play, and he’s somebody that we can — man, he’s going to keep the ship afloat. That’s it. We don’t need him to come in and win a game. You just want to feel like, ‘All right.’ So obviously he’s going to need to take another step up.”
Goff’s contract extension shows that the Lions firmly believe he’s their long-term starting quarterback. If Hooker is ever going to be an NFL starter, it will probably be elsewhere. But every team wants to have confidence that its No. 2 quarterback can do the job when called upon. That’s what the next three months are all about for Hooker.
