Ohio State football: Malik Hooker still looking for new team

The former Ohio State football player is still looking for a team after four injury-prone years with the Indianapolis Colts.

I was excited. It was the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft and the Browns were up next with Ohio State safety Malik Hooker still on the board. Draft experts saw Hooker as a ball-hawking, Ed Reed-type of player.

Cleveland had just taken Myles Garrett with the first-overall pick and now had a chance to add a future All-Pro to their secondary. They traded the pick. I had a near meltdown. I felt the Browns had blown a chance to draft a real impact player. Indianapolis chose Hooker a few picks later. Those experts raved about what the Colts were getting.

Fast forward to May of last year. The Colts declined to pick up the option for a fifth year on Hooker’s contract and he became a free agent after the 2020 season. While many free agents have found new NFL homes, Hooker is still looking. Why is a player with that much talent and athleticism still looking for a place to play? When you take a look at his four seasons with the Colts you begin to understand.

After being drafted, Hooker missed offseason workouts with the team because of surgery. He suffered an injury on the first day of training camp and then hurt his shoulder later in camp. His rookie season ended after just seven games due to a knee injury.

He started 27 of the Colts’ 32 games over the next two seasons, but the injury bug got him again last year when he tore his Achilles in just the second game. Injuries have caused Hooker to miss 31 of the 67 games Indianapolis has played in his four seasons with the team.

Injuries are certainly a reason teams have not rushed to sign him. Money is also a factor. NFL GMs are not going to pay a high asking price for a guy who has played in barely half of his team’s games in his career. Bucknuts reached out to a source in one NFL front office who put it this way,

"“Malik needs to get realistic about his value. He didn’t just forget how to ball. His body is wrecked. [The Colts] would not have released him if he was physically ready. But he still wants to be paid like the guy he was before his first injury. Every team whose had interest had their doctors involved. So it’s a thing where teams have told his [agent] to give them a call when [Hooker] is going to be serious about his value.”"

That’s a very blunt assessment and sums up why the former Ohio State football player is still searching for a new team. It’s obvious to me Hooker’s situation is still very much up in the air. I’ve run across articles tying him to multiple teams with no consensus of a landing spot for him.

One says he loves the Steelers. Another says the Cowboys are on the verge of signing him. Carolina is also mentioned as a possible suitor. As of right now, he doesn’t appear to be close to striking a deal anywhere.

Hooker turned in one of the great seasons in school history for the Ohio State football team in 2016 when he had seven interceptions, returned three for touchdowns, and was a consensus All-American. With the Colts he had seven interceptions in 36 career regular-season games. Three of those came in his first three games with the team.

He hopes to visit more teams in the coming weeks, but I will not be surprised if he remains unsigned into the opening of training camps next month.