Photo: Chris Leduc/Icon Sportswire

Usually, the saying goes that players who are athletes but can’t catch the ball play cornerback. Well, a cornerback who won the Chuck Bednarik Award as the nation’s best defender also took home the Fred Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s best receiver (and something else called the Heisman Trophy).

Travis Hunter is an incredible athlete whose versatility reached unprecedented levels while playing at Jackson State and Colorado. In his final year, Hunter played 700-plus snaps on both offense and defense, rarely coming off the field at any point in time.

Even though Hunter’s intentions are to play both sides of the ball 100% of the time in the NFL, it will be rather difficult to excel at both on a full-time level. Covering the best receivers in the world AND trying to become one of the best receivers in the world is something nobody has seen and would be a monumental task to achieve. 

Assuming he will pick one side as primary, our scouting department believes he will provide the most value as a cornerback and scouted him as such. But to capture the full picture of who Hunter is, we wanted to break down his receiving ability from a metrics perspective to find where his best part-time value can be applied on the offensive side of the ball. Playing both sides all the time may be impossible, but there will come opportunities that having one of the freakiest athletes on the field can pay dividends on the scoreboard.

Here is what his Stats Overview would look like on our draft site if he were coming out as a receiver.

Hunter comes into the draft with some of the surest hands we have seen since we started collecting data in 2016. Hunter’s 2024 ranked 14th in catchable catch percentage at 94% and 19th in on-target catch percentage at 97% among the nearly 1,200 receivers with 75 or more targets in a season since 2016. Not too bad for a corner! 

From a Total Points perspective, Hunter led the Buffaloes with 31 Receiving Total Points, which was also good for 9th in FBS last season. The majority of this production was from out wide, notching 21 Receiving Total Points on 103 targets compared to only 9 Receiving Total Points on 22 targets from the slot, with the former being good for 6th in FBS last season.

Travis Hunter’s Top 10 Routes Run

Hunter’s route tree is pretty concentrated to the curl route, accounting for about one-third of his routes in 2024. Colorado had to get the ball out quick with a below-average pass protection unit, so throwing to your best player on a simple curl route with hands as sure as his proved to be successful. This also could help explain his low rate of running deep routes generally.

Even though he ran more fades and slants, the percent of his completions are lower than digs and screens. Fades make sense, as that is a lower catch probability than others and can be used as a clearout route for underneath targets. However, the gap between slants and the others is significant given that was his third most common route, but was only targeted 9 times.    

Given that the majority of his receptions come on the curl route, it isn’t a shock that his yards after catch per reception were so low (18th out of 22 qualifying players SIS scouted this year). His ability to make people miss and break tackles is above average, so hitting him more in space where he can show that athleticism can help his YAC.

Hunter starred on both sides of the ball in college, both with his production (most Total Points among receivers and corners in FBS in 2024) and pure athleticism. He made plenty of highlight reel catches and has sure hands in got-to-have-it situations. He has room to grow as a receiver and was not fully unleashed at Colorado on that side of the ball. It will be intriguing to see if a team lets him play both sides in some capacity, as there is a path to success with his profile.