Developmental déjà vu: Lions QB Hooker finds confidence with experience, same as he did at Tennessee

Allen Park — By the time he was a fifth-year senior at the University of Tennessee, quarterback Hendon Hooker was teeming with swagger and playing with rarified confidence.

His attitude and performance were the result of years of hard work and accumulated experience. He never quite put things together through his first three seasons at Virginia Tech — where his production was good, not great — but he hit his stride quickly with the Vols, securing the starting job in early October his first year on campus.

He ended up completing 68.8% of his throws for 6,080 yards, 58 touchdowns and just five interceptions in 24 games, before a torn ACL prematurely ended his 2022 campaign.

That’s the guy the Lions thought they were getting — at a discount because of the injury — when they selected Hooker in the third round of the 2023 draft. But with a required retooling of his mechanics, the reality is they were getting a player closer to the Virginia Tech version than what Hooker had been at Tennessee. A reboot of the developmental cycle necessitated a rediscovery of the confidence that made him a Heisman front-runner prior to the knee injury.