Tennessee football: National media keeps sighting Hendon Hooker

Over two months ago, we posted this article about how ridiculous and disrespectful it was to rank Arkansas Razorbacks quarterback K.J. Jefferson over Tennessee football quarterback Hendon Hooker. Last month, we slammed ESPN for listing UT’s quarterback room, and we later slammed CBS for ignoring the Vols’ room altogether.

Well, the disrespect hit new heights last week. Brad Crawford of 247Sports was the one who had Jefferson over Hooker, but he first reminded us of that fact in his ranking of SEC quarterbacks. He had Hooker at No. 3 and Jefferson at No. 2.

Tom VanHaaren of ESPN, meanwhile, had Hooker down at No. 29 in his ranking of impactful transfers the past five years. However, most egregious was PFF’s ranking of top 10 quarterbacks. Tennessee football’s signal caller wasn’t on there.

All of these came out within a week and are huge slights to Hooker. You can read our post comparing him to Jefferson that’s linked in the first paragraph as to why he should never be behind Jefferson. Nothing justifies that.

However, VanHaaren’s rankings are just as bad. Hooker came to the Vols from the Virginia Tech Hokies and maybe saved the program Josh Heupel’s first year. However, this offseason alone, he’s got Caleb Williams to the USC Trojans and Jaxson Dart to the Ole Miss Rebels ahead of Hooker.

Dart has only started half a season, and Hooker has better numbers across the board than both of them. We’re not just talking raw numbers either. He has a better completion percentage, more yards per attempt and a better touchdown to interception ratio than both of them.

Simply put, neither should be ranked as a more impactful transfer than Hooker based on what they might do this year. Those numbers are why the PFF ranking makes no sense either. Isn’t PFF supposed to track efficiency above all else and ignore the system and supporting cast?

If they did that, there’s no way Hooker would be out of the top 10, What’s ridiculous is that Williams is actually No. 2 on that list, and Spencer Rattler, who lost his starting job last year, is No. 3. Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud are the only quarterbacks with a clear-cut case above Hooker.

Taking all of this into account, Tennessee football once again has a superstar in the backfield getting no love. Hooker joins Johnny Majors and Peyton Manning, who were both snubbed in their Heisman campaigns. He’s getting the disrespect in the preseason, but it’s embarrassing now.