The Detroit Lions are going to have a tough decision to make at the backup quarterback spot.
No, it's not who will win the job, as Kyle Allen appears to have already done that after outperforming Hendon Hooker by a wide margin over the last two preseason games. In fact, even head coach Dan Campbell has basically said as much.
“He’s playing better,” Campbell said of Allen. “I would say right now if you had to go in with a No. 2 (quarterback) right now who would you trust more? Yeah, I would trust Kyle more because he’s proven more after these two games.”
So, that means Hooker's roster spot will come down to whether or not the Lions want to carry a third quarterback behind Jared Goff and Allen.
Doing so would enable the Lions to keep developing Hooker, but it would also prevent the team from having a little extra depth elsewhere, which is notable considering the injury issues Detroit had in 2024.
And that's exactly the way Campbell looks at it when he was asked about carrying the third signal-caller on the initial 53-man roster.
“Well that’s exactly what it is. If you do that, you lose depth, what, D-line or O-line? Or receiver, or defense back, or linebacker or — you get the point," he said.
"So, how important is that relative to the other positions? What’s hard is — look, call it what you want, when you have a year like we did last year, you get affected a little bit by it. It has an effect on the way you think. Depth, depth, depth. We’ve got to make sure that we have the depth,” Campbell added.
It would be a lot easier to keep Hooker as the third quarterback if he had shown us more in 2025. Instead, Hooker may have actually regressed and there isn't a lot of hope for his future — and not just with the Lions, but in the NFL entirely.
Keeping Hooker around as the third quarterback is a luxury the Lions can't afford in a season in which the team once again has Super Bowl aspirations and needs all the depth it can get.
As a result, Hooker's days in Detroit might be numbered.
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