To a certain extent, I get it.

Hendon Hooker is getting all of these last-minute meetings with NFL teams just a few weeks ahead of the NFL Draft. Teams are doing their due diligence on a player who has a unique prospect profile. Most 25-year-old quarterbacks have been figured out by now. Add to the fact that Hooker is working his way back from a torn ACL that prevented him from participating in virtually all of the the pre-Draft on-field evaluation (he got a few throws in at Tennessee’s Pro Day), and sure, I can get why there are some unknowns that NFL front offices are weighing.

But my goodness. Watching the way Hooker is being discussed in the pre-Draft process is maddening. It’s maddening that it took until April for Todd McShay and Mel Kiper Jr. to put Hooker in Round 1 of a mock draft. On the flip side, it’s maddening that the pushback against Hooker is the offense he played in while Anthony Richardson is getting top-5 love despite the fact that he didn’t master any college offense.

Oh, and did I mention that Hooker is 25? I did?

Like, the guy who spent 6 years in college, started 38 games and attempted 944 passes with an 80-12 TD-INT ratio is considered this polarizing prospect while we’re just cool with the struggles that Richardson and even Will Levis had playing in the same exact division.

Maddening, I tell you.

And for what it’s worth, I’m by no means banging the drum that Hooker is a perfect prospect. It’s wild to think his 5th-year option wouldn’t kick in until he’s 30, and if you’re a team drafting a quarterback hoping that your guy can take his lumps as a rookie, sure, the guy coming off the torn ACL might not be the target for you even if he’s expected to be ready by the start of the season.

But why is Hooker the one with the varying NFL Draft stock? And why is it instead that impressive Pro Days have seemingly locked Richardson and Levis into the front half of the first round?

I suppose some of this will come across as “college guy who doesn’t understand that the NFL evaluation process goes beyond a guy’s numbers.” I get that. It’s actually why I think Levis and Hooker are pretty close in how I’d value them on my hypothetical big board.

What I don’t get is what suddenly changed about Hooker. Why did this guy, who played in 8 games on national TV this year alone (ABC/ESPN/CBS) get this type of arc as a prospect? If you’re now banging the drum for Hooker, what suddenly hit home? That he actually knows how to read defenses? That he’s the type of guy that you’d want as the face of a franchise? None of that should be news in April.

It’s perfectly fair to have some skepticism about the offense a guy plays in. It’s why, even as a Chicago Bears fan hoping Justin Fields is a star in the making, I think it’s fair to bring up the lack of success that Ohio State quarterbacks have had in the NFL, wherein they don’t get 3 yards of separation to make throws like they do in college.

At the same time, though, it’s not like Josh Heupel’s offense is new. The Baylor concepts were dissected in great detail throughout the 2010s. Some say the up-tempo nature of it and the basic route tree will prevent Hooker’s skill set from translating to the NFL.

This breakdown, however, is going a bit too far and ignoring how synonymous college and NFL offenses have become in recent years:

Even Alabama fans might push back on the notion that “it’s not real,” but that’s a different discussion for a different time.

Lost in the shuffle of that discussion was the fact that Hooker did have to relearn how to play in Heupel’s offense after he transferred from Virginia Tech. Hooker mastered that tempo, and his use of his legs, I’d argue, was more about his craftiness than having extraordinary physical abilities like Richardson.

It’s ironic because once upon a time, Hooker couldn’t beat out Joe Milton for Tennessee’s starting job. It’s Milton who shares plenty of similarities to Richardson. Alex Golesh called Joe Milton “the practice best quarterback they’d ever seen.” The reason that Milton lost his job to Hooker was because he couldn’t put it all together. The accuracy and the poise needed to play the position at a high level just weren’t there, despite the fact that Milton looks like he was built out of a lab to throw a football for a living.

Guess which guy made the offense look like “Looney Tunes” and which guy spent the last 2 years as a backup. By the way, get ready to see Milton in way-too-early 2024 mock drafts with zero mention of the fact that he’s been benched at 2 different Power 5 programs.

But this isn’t about Hooker vs. Milton. This is about Hooker compared to the rest of his quarterback class and whether he can be the second coming of Jalen Hurts.

That’s clearly what teams are trying to figure out. It was Hurts who needed a fresh start to continue to develop, as was the case with Hooker. Hurts watched 4 quarterbacks come off the board ahead of him, which could very well be the case for Hooker. We don’t know if Hooker will last until the second round like Hurts did or if the latest mock drafts are a sign that he’ll sneak into the first round.

If Hooker ends up being a late-first, early-second round pick, those of us who actually watched him in college would find some vindication. It’s been strange to see him go from being not even in the same conversation as Levis and Richardson — even though we had an entire season of SEC football that suggested the contrary — to now perhaps being part of that Day 1 discussion.

The Draft is weird, and so too is the entire Hooker prospect arc. Maybe one day it’ll all make sense.

But today’s not that day.