Travis Hunter’s NFL position? Focus on defense says Charles Woodson

On By Littum

Jarrett Bell
| USA TODAY

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Travis Hunter has splendidly proved a point. Go on, go on telling the best player in college football what he can’t do. He wasn’t meant to survive, let alone thrive, in the face of excruciating demands while playing full-time at two positions.

Or so said the conventional wisdom.

And look at him now: The throwback Colorado Buffaloes star wide receiver and, er, cornerback, is the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy Saturday night.

While the NFL looms, Hunter certainly can’t expect to excel at either position at the next level.

Can he?

“I’m not going to say what the man can’t do,” Pro Football Hall of Famer Charles Woodson told USA TODAY Sports. “We just saw him do it in college.

“I’d prefer he didn’t. If I was an NFL team and had a guy as talented as him, I’d play him on defense. But I’d have some packages for him on offense. He’s too talented player to not use on offense at all. But I wouldn’t put him out there full time on offense and defense. The NFL is, just in terms of the physicality of the game, guys’ body style is a lot more mature, there’s a different speed to the game, just because guys are much better at all levels of the game.

“So I wouldn’t try to play him every time, but I would put him out there; I would play him some snaps on offense.”

Woodson, who played 18 seasons in the NFL as a defensive back and now serves as a studio analyst for Fox Sports, is as credible as anyone to reflect on Hunter’s accomplishments and assess the enormous prospects for his NFL future.

On his way to winning the Heisman Trophy in 1997, Woodson was the supreme cornerback who tried out as a wide receiver at Michigan. Over his final two seasons with the Wolverines, Woodson caught 24 passes and logged 6 rushing attempts.

The comparison stops when you consider that as incredible of an athlete as Woodson was, he was just a part-time forward. That’s one of the reasons he’s so impressed with Hunter, who averaged 113 snaps per game. game — with essentially a 50-50 split between offense and defense — to help ignite Colorado (9-3) to a berth in the upcoming Alamo Bowl.

As a big-play receiver, Hunter caught 92 passes for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns this season.

As a shutdown corner, he had four interceptions, tallied 11 passes and had a key, game-sealing forced fumble.

“You watch a game and they come off the field on defense and everybody from the defense goes over to the sideline and he’s in the offensive huddle getting ready to line up and play offense,” Woodson said. “So impressed with what he’s done. Travis has been taking care of himself and making sure he’s ready to play every single week.”

Still, this kind of double duty would be a bit much to expect in the NFL. Even for Hunter, 21, is considered the most gifted athlete ready for the NFL draft in April and is expected to be a top five pick. But after convincing his college coach, Deion Sanders, to let him play both ways — first at Jackson State, then the past two seasons at Colorado — Hunter (6-1, 185) has been adamant, that he wants to continue playing both ways in the NFL.

It’s going to be a tough sell – at least when you envision full-time roles in both positions.

Two high-level talent evaluators for NFL teams told USA TODAY Sports, on condition of anonymity, that they project Hunter as a cornerback who could be used less as a wide receiver — essentially echoing Woodson’s sentiments. The team leaders did not wish to be identified due to the proprietary elements of personnel evaluations.

“I see him as a cornerback who can give you some wide receiver snaps,” said the personnel director of an NFL team. “I think he could play wide receiver as his primary position, but he’s more valuable to me as a corner because of the impact he could have there.”

In other words, there is a supply and demand equation at work here. It is much more difficult for NFL teams to land an elite cornerback than to secure an elite receiver.

“He has a lot of upside as a cornerback,” one NFL general manager said. “And you can find wide receivers almost everywhere now, if that makes sense.”

Then there’s just the thought of the demands it would take for Hunter to excel at two positions. Hunter has recorded 688 snaps on defense and 672 plays on offense this season.

Let it be noted: The line in the sand has been drawn for Hunter and those visions of going both ways as a full-time player at the next level.

As the GM put it: “I don’t see how he can last playing more than 100 snaps per game for 17 weeks in the NFL.”

The personnel director agrees: “I think playing both ways in the NFL would be too much in terms of the playbook, coverages, adjustments, situationally, all those things.”

Drafted fourth overall by the Oakland Raiders in 1998, Woodson laughed when asked if he could have envisioned playing both ways in the NFL. Even just a little bit.

“I wish I could have played more snaps on offense in the NFL,” he said.

In the early years of his NFL career, Woodson got a handful of snaps on offense. That’s not even a footnote on his illustrious NFL resume, which includes a Super Bowl championship with the Green Bay Packers, eight All-Pro selections, a Defensive Player of the Year award and a share of the league record 13 career defensive touchdown returns . During the 1999 and 2000 seasons, Woodson caught two passes for 27 yards and rushed once for minus-3 yards.

“I used to tell Jon Gruden, man, to put me in the game more on offense,” Woodson recalled, referring to his Raiders coach. “I don’t know if it was him and he just didn’t want to do it. I don’t know if it was Al (Davis). I would have been more than welcome to play more offense.”

Starring at Michigan, Woodson had a much more receptive ear to that suggestion from coach Lloyd Carr after starting receivers Amani Toomer and Mercury Hayes ended their college eligibility with the 1995 season.

“We lost the big guys after my first year with Mercury and Amani,” Woodson reflected. “I went up to Lloyd, like, ‘Hey, man, I can play some offense, too.'” That’s kind of how it started. Even with that being said, I only played a handful of games on offense.

“But for Travis, he just continued that high school mentality into college.”

As Woodson pointed out, that’s typical of many elite high school players—in Hunter’s case at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, GA; for Woodson at Ross High School in Fremont, Ohio — to play both ways before declaring a position in transition at the college level.

However, when Hunter made it clear as one of the nation’s top recruits that he intended to play both ways in college, only Sanders, also known as “Coach Prime,” among the many college coaches he met during the process that agreed to the opportunity.

Sanders, who once played simultaneously as the NFL’s best cornerback and kick returner while playing as a Major League Baseball outfielder, arguably has a different perspective than most of his coaching peers. And he’s a Hall of Famer who played wide receiver during his 14-year NFL career — most notably in 1996 with the Dallas Cowboys, when he caught 36 passes for 475 yards and hauled in a 47-yard reception during Super Bowl 30 – the victory. against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“For Coach Prime to see that talent in him and say, ‘You know what? I’m going to let you do this thing. I’m going to let you go out here and play the game every single snap. As long as you can get out there and play the game,'” Woodson said. “I think it’s had a huge impact on his life.”

Moral of the story for Hunter: Never say never when you tell him what he can’t do.

Follow USA TODAY Sports Jarrett Bell on X @JarrettBell.