After playing only sparingly in his first two seasons as a Buckeye, Malik Hooker became a breakout star for Ohio State as a redshirt sophomore in 2016.
His younger brother Marcus has the chance for a breakout season of his own going into his third year at Ohio State in 2020.
Following the departure of three starters from last season’s secondary, just as was the case going into 2016, Marcus Hooker is among the Ohio State defensive backs who could potentially play a much bigger role this year. Specifically with Jordan Fuller gone from the deep safety position, Hooker is a candidate to patrol the back middle of the Buckeyes’ defense this year, just as Malik did four years ago.
Marcus Hooker isn’t simply looking to follow in his brother’s footsteps, though. He wants to make his own name for himself.
“I kind of try not to steer myself into his world,” Marcus Hooker told Eleven Warriors at media day before the Fiesta Bowl. “We have two different paths. We did choose the same place and the same school, but we’re not the same.”
While Malik Hooker didn’t play at all as a true freshman in 2014 (before the rules were changed allowing redshirts to play in up to four games), Marcus Hooker’s Ohio State career began with several setbacks. He was suspended for the first game of his freshman year after a DUI arrest near his hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania. He ended up playing in only two games around midseason before suffering a scaphoid fracture in his wrist, which required him to undergo two surgeries and ended his freshman year early.
At the time, Hooker started to have doubts about whether he’d ever see significant playing time at Ohio State, and he admitted in December that he had thoughts back then about moving on.
“It made me think whether football was right for me because I wasn’t playing as much, I wasn’t getting the reps that I thought I was going to get, but I mean, I had to look on the bright side and just kind of keep pushing myself,” Hooker said. “Just talking to coaches and speaking with my teammates like Cam Brown, Chris Olave, they were just telling me like, ‘Just keep working on everything and just keep going.’”
Hooker stuck with the program despite his early struggles, and that started to pay off last season, when he played in all 14 games on special teams and seven games on defense for a total of 82 defensive snaps. While most of those snaps came alongside other backups in blowout wins, he did play in some key situations late in the year, including 18 defensive snaps in two-safety nickel packages against Michigan when Shaun Wade and Josh Proctor were both sidelined by injuries.
To Hooker, who finished last season with seven total tackles and one pass breakup, those snaps came as a pleasant surprise.
“It was kind of shocking to me, really,” Hooker said. “Because I wasn’t expecting myself to work my way into the lineup that early. But we had an injury ‘cause Josh had a concussion and I kinda was his backup after Isaiah (Pryor) left, and I kinda was the only one left. So I kinda had no choice, really.”
While Hooker’s opportunity to play came in part because of injuries and Pryor’s decision to transfer, his insertion into the lineup against Michigan was a strategic decision. After the Buckeyes had their worst defensive half of the year in the first half against the Wolverines, they used more two-safety looks in the second half of that game than they had all year to that point, and they made that shift because they believed Hooker could get the job done as the second safety.
“The way he’s been practicing and the way he’s been approaching it in the meetings, he deserved to play,” Jeff Hafley, who was Ohio State’s defensive backs coach at the time, said in the week following the Michigan game. “And it just so happened to be in a really big game. But he had a great couple weeks of practice, he’s really locked in and he played really well.”
Hooker credits Hafley and Matt Barnes, who is still the Buckeyes’ assistant secondary coach and special teams coordinator, with developing him to be a better player in 2019 than he was in 2018.
“Coach Hafley and Coach Barnes really inspired me, and they taught me a lot of football this year,” Hooker said. “Way more than I had known my whole life, so they just basically gave me a glimpse of like what I could be and what I am now.”
Hafley is now the head coach at Boston College, but Hooker will now be coached by one of the coaches who originally recruited him to Ohio State, Kerry Coombs. And the door is wide open for Hooker to continue climbing the depth chart and play a big role in Coombs’ secondary this year.
He might not be a starter this season – Proctor is viewed as the frontrunner to replace Fuller at middle safety, and the Buckeyes aren’t expected to change their base defense from last season – but it’s not out of the question either. With multiple starting spots to also fill at cornerback, particularly at slot cornerback, that could force Ohio State to shuffle some things around, and that could possibly lead to more situations in which Proctor and Hooker – assuming they maintain their position as the Buckeyes’ top two safeties – are on the field together.
Even if not, Coombs has expressed that he would like to rotate defensive backs if possible, so ultimately, there should be significant playing time available to Hooker if he proves to Coombs and the rest of his coaches that he deserves it.
He’s already earned the confidence of many of his teammates, including the lone returning starter from last year’s secondary, Shaun Wade.
“People really sleep on Hook,” Wade said before the Fiesta Bowl. “He’s gonna be a great, great player.”
It isn’t going to be easy for Hooker to escape the shadow of his older brother, if only because of how spectacular Malik Hooker’s third and final season at Ohio State was. The elder Hooker earned unanimous All-American honors in 2016 after recording 74 total tackles with seven interceptions, including three returned for touchdowns, and he went on to be the No. 15 overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft.
The younger Hooker would certainly love to experience similar success at Ohio State and beyond, and he has turned to his older brother for guidance on how to potentially reach those heights.
“Malik, he’s been a huge inspiration throughout my life,” Marcus Hooker said. “Even when I was younger, he would always teach me new things and teach me a different way to approach things. So he’s always been in my life.”
“People really sleep on Hook. He’s gonna be a great, great player.”– Shaun Wade on fellow Ohio State defensive back Marcus Hooker
As a player, though, Marcus Hooker says his game is different than his brother’s. Marcus isn’t as tall as Malik – Marcus is listed at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, while Malik is listed at 6-foot-1 and 214 pounds – and acknowledges his brother might have a bit more speed, but he believes there are other areas in which he can outshine his brother.
“There’s certain things that I can do that Malik can’t do,” the younger Hooker said. “There’s certain things that he can do that I can’t.”
Marcus Hooker said he believes he has more quickness than his brother, and even though he doesn’t yet have a collegiate interception while his brother was one of the best ballhawking safeties in Ohio State history, he believes he has the upper hand in one key area of making plays on the ball.
“I got better hands than him,” Marcus said. “I catch way better than him. He’s not much faster than me, but I’m more of a quicker version of him.”
