Travis Hunter has made it clear he is determined to continue playing on both sides of the ball after he makes the jump to the NFL next week, and the New York Giants appear willing to facilitate his demands.
Hunter won the Heisman Trophy in his final year with the Colorado Buffaloes while starring at both cornerback and wide receiver, and is anticipated to be a top-five pick in next week’s draft.
The challenges of playing both positions would be substantially increased at the NFL level, but Hunter articulated how strongly he feels about continuing to play both sides in a recent interview with CBS Sports, in which he indicated he would consider giving up the game if not permitted to do so.
“It’s never playing football again,” Hunter said. “Because I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I love being on the football field. I feel like I could dominate on each side of the ball, so I really enjoy doing it.
“I just feel very confident in myself, and I got a competitive spirit that I can do whatever I put my mind to, and I feel like I can do it.”
The New York Giants are a team that could potentially select Hunter, as they own the third overall pick in the draft, and GM Joe Schoen indicated in his pre-draft press conference that they are open to the idea of him continuing at two positions.
“We would not be afraid to play him on both sides of the ball,” Schoen said.
Hunter played 86 percent of the snaps for Colorado last season, by far the highest in the FBS. In the 2024 NFL campaign, Dane Jackson of the Carolina Panthers had the highest snap count, playing 48 percent of his team’s total snaps.
And the physical and mental strain of playing both ways in the pros is something that concerns Schoen about the idea.
“We’re looking at the workloads and the yardage each day, and then to me what we will have to be settled is the mental part of it, because offense is very hard to learn and then the defense on a weekly basis, it’s not college anymore where, ‘Hey, these are our basic plays, this is our basic defense and we’re going to go play Cover 3 against Kansas, we’re going to play Cover 3 against Nebraska,'” Schoen added.
“There’s a lot more week-to-week matchup type stuff that our coaches are doing. So just how much can you handle mentally where you can go out there and execute and they can trust you to do your job.”
But he retains confidence in Hunter to rise to the challenge.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt the kid. He’s that type of athlete,” Schoen said. “He’s had that type of production, the number of snaps he plays in a game, doesn’t sit down, goes over, gets a drink of water and gets back out on the field.
“So, he’s got that type of athleticism, he’s got the right mindset, he’s a great kid. So, I wouldn’t doubt him.”
