ALLEN PARK, Mich. — This is the time of year in the NFL where everyone is supposed to feel uncomfortable.

It’s the second week of training camp for the Detroit Lions, and if you thought the sweat pouring out of veteran center Graham Glasgow’s gloves after Tuesday’s practice was a telltale sign, think again.

“Today wasn’t even that bad,” Glasgow said, laughing. “Yesterday was terrible.”

Tomorrow, thankfully, will be a day off before the Lions kick off the NFL preseason Thursday night in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio. But it’s not just the physical toll that’s worth mentioning, or monitoring, at this stage. It’s also the mental strain as coaches overload the players with information and see how quickly they regurgitate it in the heat of competition on the practice field.

And it probably says something about the progress third-year quarterback Hendon Hooker has made that he stood there after practice Tuesday, with a white towel draped over his head and a smile on his face, explaining just how relaxed he felt.

“A lot more comfortable,” he said, nodding. “A lot more confident. My teammates can hear it in my voice. A lot more inflection. A lot more control at the line. And that comes from the trust from my teammates and coaches.”

That’ll come in handy — or it should, anyway — when the Lions face the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday in another exhibition where head coach Dan Campbell doesn’t plan on playing any of his starters, really.

The Lions spent the bulk of Tuesday’s scrimmage in camp pitting Jared Goff and the first-team offense against Aidan Hutchinson and most of the rest of the defensive starters. So we can expect Hooker and veteran Kyle Allen to split the game reps Thursday, with each quarterback vying for the backup job getting a half. Presumably, they’ll trade starts throughout the preseason as that No. 2 battle plays out through August.

“I mean, the preseason games (have been) important my whole career,” said Allen, 29, who made Detroit his sixth NFL stop when he signed here as a free agent in March. “I've been trying to make teams since Year 1, and I’m going into Year 8 now.”

No longer a rookie

And while it’s too early to say how that competition will play out, it’s safe to say it’s looking better at this point than it did in years past, whether it was Hooker and Nate Sudfeld a year ago, or Sudfeld and Adrian Martinez in 2023, or David Blough and Tim Boyle before that. Even with a new coordinator, John Morton, flooding the zone with new installations on a daily basis.

“That’s a lot,” Morton acknowledged Monday. “But I think they’ve handled it really well, just the operation and everything, making throws.”

Hooker, for his part, looks markedly better than he did a year ago. The 2023 third-round pick missed most of his first NFL season rehabbing from a torn ACL, and if he still seemed like a rookie last summer, well, that’s probably because he felt like one, too.

“Yeah, I did,” Hooker admits now. “Truly taking a full calendar year off is something I'd never done before. So getting my feet back under me and playing at a high level like I know I can, I really feel like myself again.”

And it does feel like he’s finally finding himself, showing more command at the line — we can hear it from the sidelines — and more consistency in the pocket.

When the Lions wrapped up their offseason work and headed off for a summer break, “we gave (Hooker) some things to do while he was home,” Campbell said. It mostly centered on his footwork and his “urgency” after the snap. The sort of things that were a glaring issue for Hooker a year ago, when he’d hang onto the football far too long and occasionally turn even 7-on-7 snaps into scramble drills. Some of that still seemed to be lingering in his game this spring during OTAs as well.

“Look, Hooker knows the deal,” Campbell said at the start of camp. “You’re out here to compete. … He knows what it is. He knows it’s time to take the next step, and so it’s his move. But I think he’s wired right and it means something to him, so here we go, man.”

It’s going better, clearly. Hooker says he feels like he has made a “huge jump” when it comes to “playing in rhythm” in this camp. And on Monday, he looked composed in red-zone work at the end of a long, hot practice, finding Shane Zylstra and Jackson Meeks in the end zone for scores in 7-on-7 work and then Zylstra again in 11-on-11 drills on a designed rollout. Hooker also ran one in for a score, showing off that mobility that helped make him such an intriguing draft prospect coming out of Tennessee.

'Make the right decisions'

But Allen has stepped up, too, and seems to be capitalizing on his opportunities, showing his veteran poise and accuracy. Working with the second-team offense Monday — the two backups continue to alternate there — Allen coolly engineered a successful two-minute drill in a situational period. Down four with the ball at his own 30 and 1:30 on the clock, Allen led an 11-play drive that included a handful of completions to different receivers and capped it with a 10-yard TD toss to Tom Kennedy as time expired.

One area where Hooker seems to have an edge is with his arm talent, and with Morton putting more emphasis on stretching the field with the Lions’ passing game, that could tip the scales in the end, along with the fact that he's under contract through 2026 as well. “Dialing it up downfield a lot more often,” as Hooker put it Tuesday, “is something I enjoy doing.”

As for what Campbell wants to see his quarterbacks do Thursday in their preseason debut, though, it’s pretty simple.

“Make the right decisions,” Campbell said. “Don’t try to do anything flashy. Don’t try to ‘make plays.’ You just do what you’re asked to do, and wherever the defense dictates that the ball should go, that’s where it should go. And then let those guys make a play. If it’s supposed to go down to the back, put it to the back, he’s got to make a play and we’ll see what happens. Even if that means we’ve got to punt, that’s OK.

“You just do what you’re asked to do, run the offense, stay cool, stay calm, stay collected, run that huddle, make sure there’s clear communication and that’s all I’m looking for. It’s all I care about.”

In other words, he’s looking for his backup quarterbacks to provide him some comfort.

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