So what's the deal with Travis Hunter?
The draft's biggest story can't actually play both ways, can he?
I’ve been fascinated with Travis Hunter all offseason, in large part because I’ve suspected everyone would be, soon enough. I haven’t done that much content this offseason, but when I have, I’ve been talking about Hunter on pods, and on social, and in some of the writeups. So you might have heard some of these comments, but I haven’t really laid out the whole take somewhere, and I had one of those moments like my Jayden Daniels post a couple months ago where I got asked by a buddy and I just went start to finish on it. I wanted to share that same argument here.
In theory, Travis Hunter is the biggest storyline the NFL has seen in a long time. This guy plays both ways, and he does both at a high level. But we’re all conditioned to be pretty skeptical these days, and throughout most of the offseason, a pretty overwhelming discussion has more or less assumed he can’t actually realize the upper bounds of the uncertainty in his future, and has approached the conversation somewhere along the lines of, “Since he obviously can’t be a full-time player on both sides of the ball and the NFL level, what can he actually do?” That approach led to early talk that he was better as a cornerback — which he played more of in the earlier years of his college process — and that conversation was strong enough that this likely top-two overall pick was going well into the 100s in early ADP on sites like Underdog. People were concerned last year’s Biletnikoff Award winner for the best WR in college football wouldn’t play WR.
That feeling seems to have dissipated, mostly, in large part because we’ve gotten strong reports that the teams at the top of the draft — most notably, the Browns, who appear poised to take Hunter in a few hours with the second-overall pick — view him not just as capable of playing both ways, but probably as a WR first. That’s the first part of this whole equation, which is that CB upside is more difficult to maintain over time at the NFL level, for one reason or another, and even elite players at that position tend to have short peaks, particularly in comparison to WRs.
What position makes more sense?
I remember learning this lesson about CBs as it related to DFS, which first really took off a decade ago in 2015. Right around that time, WR/CB matchups became popular discussion points, but a couple of years of looking at those matchups revealed that the really difficult CB matchup you wanted to avoid for fantasy seemed to be quickly changing. For a bit it was Josh Norman. Marshon Lattimore had a nice run. Guys like Darrelle Revis and Jalen Ramsey seemed to play at a high level for longer, but looking back at PFF grades shows me that even those weren’t how I remembered them. Revis had a true five-year peak with the Jets, while Ramsey was great for that one early Jacksonville year, then sort of re-found that really high-end play for that stretch with the Rams, but wasn’t necessarily the same player throughout.
Anyway, there are far more names like Norman who played at a particularly high level for basically only one season, and what makes guys like Revis and Ramsey stand out is probably just the number of “good” or even “great” seasons that were maybe not quite on that level of a true shutdown corner.
Comparatively, we can come up with a million WRs, and I don’t probably need to harp on this point. But a huge part of my point today is going to relate to the second contract for Hunter, because that’s what players tend to care about. And as far as Hunter is concerned, it’s extremely notable that there are currently eight WRs with a an average annual contract value (AAV) over $30 million, while the No. 1 cornerback in AAV (Derek Stingley) sits exactly at $30 million, and No. 2 (Jaycee Horn) sits a full $5 million less at $25 million.
What the Deion connection means
I don’t want to pretend to know what makes Travis Hunter tick, but I do think he’s fascinating to theorize about. He was the top overall prospect coming out of high school but chose to go to tiny Jackson State for presumably one key reason: To play for Deion Sanders. Deion has been a marketing genius since his playing days — hell, since before he was drafted, with the infamous combine story around his 40 time — with his own “Prime” TV show, tons of time on daily sports talk shows, and a clear understanding for the business side of sports.
The other main thing, beyond business savvy, that Deion is known for, is playing multiple sports, and playing multiple positions within football. Beyond the baseball stuff, Deion was always a high-end corner who was also a high-end return specialist, with six career punt return TDs as well as three kickoff return TDs (not to mention nine TDs off interceptions, and another off a fumble recovery). But in 1996, he also played WR more extensively than I think people realize. It was only one season where he was more than a bit offensive player, but while with the Dallas Cowboys that year he racked up 67 targets and caught 36 for 475 yards.
If we’re to take lessons from Travis Hunter going to play for Deion and then follow him to Colorado, I think there are two clear ones. First, he was always going to understand the business reasons to prefer WR, and players do have agency in this process in a way that has been discounted. It’s a no-brainer decision.
Second, and more importantly — in a way that supersedes the first point — he was going to clearly be opposed to being limited to one side, something he’s made clear.
The decision Hunter made at 18 to go play for Deion, and then at 19 to transfer to Colorado to follow him, set him on an early path toward a goal of being a unicorn. That path paid off with a Heisman Trophy win last season, which is this massive data point people do seem to be ignoring. He’s supposed to need to be limited in the pros, but he just played both ways at a high enough level to win the Heisman, the Biletnikoff, and the Lott Trophy for outstanding defensive player.
What did he actually do in college?
There are two parts to this question. First is about how much he played both ways, but then there’s also the very important question of how good he is? Let’s take them one at a time.
Per PFF, Hunter played only 87 offensive snaps in his one year as a true freshman at Jackson State, while he played 503 on defense. Best I can tell, this is where the notion he’s a cornerback first dates back to, because he was, in college.
But in his sophomore year, after transferring to Colorado, Hunter played 592 defensive snaps and 452 on offense, in only nine games. That amounted to a combined 116 snaps per game, an absurd figure. He graded very well on both sides of the ball at PFF, and caught 57 passes for 721 yards and 5 TDs.
Last year, in his final season of college football, he exploded for a 96-1258-15 receiving line, while playing 753 offensive snaps, and also 776 on defense. He played in 13 games, which came out to 117.6 snaps per game. He once again graded very highly on both sides of the ball.
Already having played over 115 snaps per game in two different college seasons is absurd. You might have heard recent commentary (from Hunter, or from Shedeur Sanders) about there being more snaps in college games than in the NFL in recent seasons, and typically NFL teams run between 60-65 snaps per game, on average (meaning there are 120-130 per game, between the two teams combined).
Now, there are some questions about Hunter’s skill on the offensive side of the ball. One way I saw it recently put was that he might only be a B-level player on both sides. I want to come back to that concept, because it’s fascinating to think about how valuable he’d be as “just” a B-level player on both sides, but not a true A on either, if he’s playing both ways (I’ll just say I think it’s pretty damn valuable, largely because of a concept I haven’t heard mentioned yet but we’re talking about a sport of attrition where teams get disqualified some years based on position group injuries — Detroit’s defense last year might be a good example — and Hunter’s flexibility could allow you to tailor his playing time to your evolving needs, which is an additional benefit beyond the obvious perk of having two starter-level players in one roster spot).
But as far as how good of a WR Hunter can be, I’ll just note that Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception was reportedly glowing, and the other writeups I’ve seen from guys like Pat Kerrane and Jakob Sanderson have also been very optimistic. Sanderson quotes Scott Barrett with this note:
Hunter had the lowest expected YPRR of any WR in this year’s class and one of the lowest of any WR since 2019, running over twice as many routes from four- and five-wide receiver sets than three-wide receiver sets. By career personnel-adjusted YPRR, Hunter (+91%) easily clears all other proj. Round 1-2 WR in this year’s class, and is much closer to a Malik Nabers (+105%) or Marvin Harrison Jr. (+104%) than a Tet McMillan (+69%) or Luther Burden (+77%).
Barrett’s expected YPRR stat is controlling for the reality that the more WRs are on the field, the more difficult it becomes to earn targets. Colorado’s pass-heavy offense utilized spread formations that included a lot of WRs, so within that system, you wouldn’t necessarily expect him to have the same elite pass-volume-adjusted numbers (e.g. Dominator Rating or Yards Per Team Attempt) of other high-end WRs. For that reason, and Colorado’s pass volume, Kerrane showed Hunter did look better through the lens of Yards Per Team Snap. Sanderson also noted Colorado relied heavily on screens in the passing game, but “typically opted not to throw them to Hunter,” citing Jacob Gibbs research that showed Hunter’s stats elevated significantly more than other high-end WR prospects if screens were removed (i.e. if trying to isolate more difficult routes).
I probably should have noted earlier that a big part of me emphasizing this context is that some of his default numbers — stuff like TPRR and YPRR, for example — are just “good” but not “great.” But because the key context around Hunter’s receiving profile all points to the numbers maybe being a little misleading, I’m personally viewing him as a really high-upside WR prospect. I think he’s actually probably more than a B-level guy, frankly on either side of the ball.
So what’s gonna happen?
Here’s the thing: Even prospects who only play one position tend to scale up their playing time as rookies, and aren’t necessarily every-down players right away. And as we saw, Hunter did that in college, starting to seriously play two ways in his second season. That said, for each of the past two years, over 22 games played, he was extremely involved at that level.
People are understandably concerned that Hunter can’t be in two places at once, which is fair. There is a reality that NFL teams meet with position groups at the same time, typically. He can’t be in defensive back meetings, and team defense meetings, if wide receiver meetings and team offense meetings occur at the same time (or vice versa).
But I’ve thought that was perhaps the smallest issue here. They can try to find workarounds with more individualized prep if they need to. These things are not always going to be perfectly reliable, but for an ESPN feature last August, Hunter had a few key quotes:
“I don’t like to party, I don’t like to go out,” Hunter said. “I barely like talking to people sometimes.”
“I literally wake up, go do my football stuff, get my recovery in and I’m back at home,” he said. “Football, school, fishing and playing my video game. That’s it.”
If I was especially worried about his ability to get in all the prep he needs to get in during an offseason or a given week, these are the kinds of quotes I’d like to see. He may need to do far more prep work each week, but at the NFL level, there’s not some kind of limit to how obsessed these guys can be with preparation (whereas there are some limitations put on players in college). It’s good that he seems like a dude that’s interested in putting in the extra prep work he’ll likely need to, to play both ways at a high level.
As far as I’m concerned, analysts have been silly to limit him. People always want to put guys into boxes that we’ve seen before (read: player comps, etc.), but there are tons of examples of dudes just being unique. And Hunter has already clearly proven that he is; that part isn’t even debatable with what he’s done at the college level over the past two seasons. He won the friggin’ Heisman last year playing over 700 snaps on both sides of the ball.
Browns GM Andrew Berry — who will likely select Hunter today — said recently that as far as workload is concerned, it matters to them that he’s a perimeter player, and the further away you are from the ball, the lower percentage of snaps where you’re getting banged up. In addition to saying they “wouldn’t put a cap on” Hunter’s workload, Berry added: “That being said, playing on the perimeter positions there’s maybe a little bit less contact than there would be as you get closer to the ball.”
I think this is a pretty massive point, frankly, though it didn’t make the headlines from that press conference (I had to dig up that quote from a video on Twitter). But playing at WR and CB, to me, I don’t feel like you’d be taking significantly more hits over the course of a game than the guys in the trenches dealing with mini collisions every snap. If I’m being honest, I think you’re probably talking about taking quite a bit less of a beating, even if you try to play both ways, than what those guys do (they are obviously much bigger humans, more prepared to withstand that, of course).
But I think in practical terms, trying to play something like 75% of the snaps on both sides of the ball would mostly just be about stamina. And that’s another thing of note Berry mentioned, was how when they scouted him, they saw this guy who would basically never come off the field but also would never even look tired. “I think one of the things that you can't fully appreciate until you actually see Travis play live is his elite conditioning.”
So what’s going to happen? It may not even be the Browns who select Hunter, because there is some discussion about a potential trade back. And right away in the first month of 2025, it’s unlikely he’s playing 100+ snaps in NFL games.
But I keep hearing these limitations, even from people who think he’s going to play a lot of WR, where it starts to be stuff like, “Maybe he’ll play 75% of the offensive and 25% of the defensive snaps.” And I’m just saying that I think all the evidence here suggests we’re probably going to see him doing the 75%/75% thing, maybe more in 2026 or 2027, but at some point in his first two or three years.
Why do I think he’ll do it that early? Because of that second contract. I don’t know how elite he’ll be, because we have a hard time projecting normal WR profiles to the NFL. I thought N’Keal Harry was going to be sick. But let’s assume he’s not a total bust (because if he is, none of this discussion really matters), and start with the outcome where he tops out as a B-level player on both sides of the ball. That type of player might make something like $20 million in AAV on a second contract, in today’s dollars (not necessarily when he’s eligible for an extension, because things might further expand).
But if he’s playing on both sides? And he’s providing your team with the flexibility to expand his playing time on either side if injuries require that? He’s going to command one of the highest non-QB contracts in the league. Myles Garrett just got a $40 million AAV contract; in today’s dollars, Hunter’s extension talks would start there.
So I’m guessing that we’re literally talking about playing twice as much to get paid twice as much, if he’s a B-level player.
If he’s an A-level player on either side, well then you could make a case that he’ll be worth $30 million+ in AAV already, and maybe at that point he should just focus on one side. And hell, as he ages, maybe there will be a side he’s clearly more talented at, and he needs to focus on.
But even if he’s an A-level player on one side and on B-level at the other… he’s making like $50 million a year if he’s playing both ways and it’s still like $10-$20 million in additional earnings he’d have if he was playing both ways. I think. I don’t know, obviously, because this is completely unprecedented.
But my point is that by the time he becomes extension eligible, on a personal level he’s going to want to have proven that he can play 100 snaps per game over a full season. Basically the only way I see it not trending that way is if it’s immediately clear he’s an A-level player on one side and like a C-level player on the other, but that seems pretty difficult to even envision in the same human. So much of what makes guys succeed at this level is intangible, and I’d probably bet if Hunter is an A-level cornerback at some point, he’s not likely a simultaneous bust at WR, given what he’s already shown he can do at the WR position.
Anyway, the draft’s going to be super fun tonight. Come hang out on the Ship Chasing livestream in three hours! And Hunter is going to be a fascinating guy the rest of this offseason, and then for his entire career. I can’t wait to see what this guy can do, because for as much as people have talked about him already, the uncertainty here is overwhelmingly tilted toward the “he’s going to do some cool shit we’ve never seen before” outcomes.
We always love asymmetrical bets in fantasy, but this one’s more about being a fan of the sport and the NFL. Travis Hunter is an asymmetrical bet to do things everyone talks about as if they were unbelievable. What I’m saying is they should not only be believed; they should almost be expected.