The NFL Draft is a lottery. Travis Hunter is two tickets.
The hyperbolic case for Travis Hunter as the #1 pick in the NFL Draft. (Please show this to the Tennessee Titans.)
Photo credit: Scott Tan/CU Independent, on Flickr
The NFL Draft is a lottery. Sometimes the surest thing possible is a bust. Sometimes a player everybody overlooked becomes a superstar. Sometimes you repeatedly write “Josh Allen is going to be very bad at playing quarterback in the NFL” and then Josh Allen turns out to be Josh Allen.
And how do you increase your chances of winning the lottery? Sadly, you can’t. There’s no way to get better at choosing numbers. You just have to buy more tickets. The same is true with the Draft. The data shows that the teams that trade up because they became convinced of their own drafting talent generally get less value that the ones who trade down for more picks, giving themselves more chances to win the lotto.
I get that. I get how foolish it is to get overhyped about one guy. But the more I think about it, the more baffled I get that the Titans are considering drafting anybody besides Colorado cornerback/wide receiver Travis Hunter with the #1 pick.
Because like I said, the NFL Draft is a lottery. And unlike every other prospect in draft history, Travis Hunter is two tickets.
Before I get into hyperbole, let's do some basic facts:
Hunter is generally regarded as the best prospect available and is listed at #1 on Arif Hasan’s consensus big board, which combines projections from 86 analysts. As of Tuesday, 72 percent of the big boards in Hasan’s composite had Hunter as the best player in the draft.
Hunter played both wide receiver and cornerback full-time in college, playing 84 percent of his team’s total snaps. He was extremely good at both positions. He had the single most decorated season in college football history, winning the Heisman Trophy as well as the awards for best wide receiver and best overall defensive player. Both positional awards were controversial… but neither was totally absurd. He was graded as a top-10 wide receiver and a top-10 cornerback by Pro Football Focus.
Things people have said about Hunter: “one of the most talented players I have ever scouted… the best ball skills of any defensive back I have ever scouted” (PFF), “a uniquely gifted prospect with rare stamina” (The Ringer), “one of the most unique prospects we have ever seen“ (ESPN), The most dynamic and instinctive two-way player I've seen in nearly a quarter-century of professionally evaluating NFL prospects,” (Fox Sports) and “the most dynamic player in the country” (Yahoo!)
As a cornerback, Hunter is most commonly compared to Hall of Famer Champ Bailey (who also played wide receiver in college.) As a receiver, he has been compared to Justin Jefferson, the league’s best active receiver. As a two-way player,
he has been compared to Deion Sanders, his college coach and also a Hall of Famer. OK, maybe these are hyperbolic, but other people said these things, not me.
There are analysts who have said that if Hunter were to play just wide receiver or cornerback, they would rate him at WR1 or CB1.
The day before the NFL Draft, there remains no consensus on whether he’ll play wide receiver or cornerback in the pros. Draft analysts and NFL players both have strong opinions each way, and there are reports of specific teams being interested in both. A common take is that the most sensible way to use him would be as a corner with limited snaps at receiver, but many analysts feel he has more upside at WR.
Those are the straight facts. There has never been a prospect with first-round potential at two separate positions. The last guys to seriously try playing both ways full-time in the NFL did it when the helmets were soft.
And who are the Titans targeting with the #1 pick? Miami’s Cam Ward, just another guy who can play quarterback1. I'm being mean, but nobody thinks of Ward as a flawless, once-in-a-generation QB prospect. And yet, everybody seems OK with Ward, the best QB in a middling QB draft, going over Hunter, a hyper-talented mega-prospect unlike any player anybody has ever scouted before. (There are even some mock drafts which have the Browns bypassing Hunter at #2 and Hunter falling to the Giants at #3. The same arguments I’m going to apply to the Titans apply to the Browns.)
After all, there’s a logic to drafting a QB first overall. QBs are the most important players on the field, and they go first overall even if they’re not the most talented player in the draft because of their value and scarcity.
But consider the value and scarcity of Travis Hunter. His value is basically impossible to approximate, because nobody has tried to do what he’s doing in the modern history of the NFL. His scarcity is infinite, for the same reason. The same logic that makes QBs the #1 pick makes Hunter the #1 pick.
The NFL Draft Machine is very good at putting players into highly specific boxes. This guy has the arm length to play tackle instead of guard; this guy has the exact physical specifications as this guy from 10 years ago, this guy projects as a slot corner with Day 2 potential. But when you give the NFL Draft Machine something it’s never seen before, it isn’t quite sure what to do. And I’m worried the Titans (and again, potentially the Browns) are having that problem with Hunter. They’ve never seen a player like this before, and they’re failing to properly think about what drafting him would mean.
We know that Travis Hunter can be two things. He’s offense and defense. He’s doing something new, but also doing something profoundly old, like, from before they put football on TV. He’s a quarterback’s dream and he’s a quarterback’s nightmare. And when it comes to the draft, he’s also two things: He’s simultaneously a bold project nobody has even attempted, and a safe pick with a built-in backup plan. He’s Travis Hunter. And that’s why I’d draft Travis Hunter with the No. 1 pick.
If Travis Hunter booms, he will affect each individual game more than any other draft pick.
We’ve been doing boring “positional value” draft conversations for wayyyyy too long to find them interesting now. “Is a running back worth a first-round pick?” OH MY GOD A TIME TRAVELER FROM 2015! Are you excited for the Parks and Rec finale? How about those dating apps, pretty crazy! Hey, how about that Steph Curry guy, have you seen him play? Anyway, can you bring us back with you? Things aren’t so great here. We can talk about it in the car.
Anyway, I get that quarterbacks are the most valuable players on any given snap. But what if Travis Hunter is able to do what he did at Colorado? A quarterback might be the most valuable player on any given snap, but Hunter changes the equation by simply playing more snaps. How do we approximate the value of one player capable of providing a bonus at two positions?
And not just any positions, but two incredibly important positions? When Pro Football Focus created a football version of WAR, they ranked cornerbacks and wide receivers as the second and fourth most valuable positions in the league. Until somebody invents an edge rusher who can flip to left tackle, WR/CB is about the most impactful combo imaginable.
So, is a guy who plays two important positions as valuable as a guy who plays the most important position?
…. Probably!
This is the rainbows and unicorns part of the article where Travis Hunter bangs his head on his own ceiling, developing into the greatest possible version of himself. Come on, it’s the draft. Let’s throw a Potential Party. Live a little!
In this world, Hunter develops into the best wide receiver and best cornerback in his draft class and plays significant snaps at both positions. How would we approximate that value?
Turns out, the NFL already has a way to imagine that: those draft value charts that help you determine whether to trade two picks for one pick.
Pretend Travis Hunter is actually two players: Travis O. Hunter, the best wide receiver in the draft, and his twin brother, Travis D. Hunter, the best cornerback in the draft. We don’t know where each would go on a big board, since no analysts are splitting Hunter up into his component parts like this. But in the last ten drafts, the average pick of the first WR selected is 8.2, and the average pick of the first CB selected is 11.2. Is the 8th and 11th pick combined more valuable than the #1 pick?
Yes. Yes. OMG yes, by so much. Even the ancient Jimmy Johnson trade value charts would put picks #8 and #11 (3050) over the value of pick #1 (3000.) More modern charts put the value of #8 and #11 significantly higher than the value of #1. For example, the one produced by Over The Cap puts 8/11 at 3731 and #1 at 3000. Combined, Travis O. Hunter and Travis D. Hunter are probably worth the #1 pick and a little something extra.
The NFL has already come to the conclusion that a top cornerback and a top wide receiver are worth roughly the same as a top quarterback in other ways, too. If we combine the average salaries of the top 10 wide receivers in the league ($19.6 million) and the salaries of the top 10 cornerbacks in the league ($16.7 million), we get $36.3 million…. which is almost exactly the average salary of the top 10 QBs in the league ($36.4 million).
And this isn’t even factoring in the various downstream benefits having a two-way player could have on things like figuring out the 53-man roster and or squeezing under the salary cap.
OK, back to reality: few people seem to expect Hunter to actually play both ways at all times. But remember: Travis Hunter actually did play both ways full time in college! He played hundreds more snaps than any NFL player did in 2024 at mile-high altitude! And he was so good at both receiver and cornerback that he won awards for both! The dream scenario is possible! He’s lived it!
Ok, that’s enough dreaming. Let’s imagine Travis Hunter’s worst-case scenarios.
If Travis Hunter busts, he still offers a backup plan.
Congratulations to me for making over 1,000 words into this article about Travis Hunter without mentioning Shohei Ohtani. A new record! Everybody compares Travis Hunter, the first guy to try playing offense and defense since they invented color TV, to Shohei Ohtani, the first guy to try pitching and hitting since they invented black-and-white TV. Even the Browns GM brought Ohtani up:
"It's a little bit like Ohtani, where when he's playing one side, he's an outstanding player," (Browns GM Andrew) Berry said Thursday during his predraft news conference. "If he's a pitcher, he's a hitter, he's an outstanding player. You obviously get a unicorn if you use him both ways."
If you’re just learning about Shohei Ohtani from Travis Hunter comparisons, here’s a fun fact: Two-way unicorn Shohei Ohtani didn’t even pitch in 2024. He hasn’t thrown in a game since August 2023, when he had elbow surgery that he’s still recovering from.
When other superstar pitchers have elbow surgery, you just have to pay them $30 million to rehab.2 Ohtani had elbow surgery… and still won NL MVP, hitting 54 home runs and helping the Dodgers win the World Series. He’s a superstar even when he’s only half the player he can be.
The metaphor doesn’t translate perfectly onto Travis Hunter’s potential future, because there’s no wide receiver-specific injury that will still allow him to play cornerback. If he tears his ACL, he goes from a two-way player to a zero-way player. But Hunter offers something no other prospect can: two chances to pan out.
Let’s say the two-way thing just is a non-starter. His body can’t handle it, or maybe it’s too difficult to handle the complexity of an NFL offense and NFL defense simultaneously. Whoops—the first part of this article was a huge mistake. Let’s say he focuses on cornerback… but but that doesn’t really work out either. Hunter’s 190-pound frame isn’t big enough to bring down pro receivers. His instinctive ball skills made him a superstar in college, but he keeps getting burnt in the pros by better receivers catching better passes. So three years into Hunter’s career, his team takes a do-over and switches him to the other side of the ball. Now focused full-time on receiver for the first time in his career, he becomes the best receiver on his team.
This is a disaster scenario, where a team gets only a sliver of the value they wanted from Hunter… and it still ends with him being a productive player in a meaningful role.
We already talked about ceilings, but drafting teams should also consider floors. Hunter’s two-way potential not only gives him the opportunity to be the most valuable draft pick possible, but also gives him a second chance to provide value of Plan A fails. . Every other player has just one chance to succeed. If a quarterback can’t cut it, it’s all over. You’ve wasted your pick and wasted several seasons trying to build your offense around that QB’s skill set, resetting your entire franchise’s developmental timeline several years.3
Remember: the NFL Draft is a lottery, and Travis Hunter is two tickets. In our first scenario, both tickets cashed. Hooray! Double jackpot. That’s more valuable than anybody else’s one ticket. In the second scenario, our first ticket came up blank. If we’d picked anybody else, we’d be screwed. But Travis Hunter is two tickets. I feel pretty confident one is going to hit.
I have scouted both players in person, by which I mean I drove across the country to watch the 2023 game between Colorado and Washington State and left at halftime to drink at a nearby bar and by the time I got back Colorado’s third-string QB was in the game.
Trust me! I’m a Yankees fan. This is what’s happening with Gerrit Cole right now.
Trust me! I’m a Jets fan. This has happened with… well, like, four different QB prospects.
Well I'm sold.