If Travis Hunter is available when the New York Giants select at No. 3 overall and they decide to not draft a quarterback, the Heisman Trophy winner may end up in the perfect situation for his wants and needs at the NFL level.
Hunter has been clear that he sees himself as a two-way player, even at the NFL level. In fact, if an NFL team told him he couldn’t play both ways, he wouldn’t react well.
He wouldn’t even want to play.
“It’s never playing football again, Hunter said when asked how he’d feel if he was to be pegged into offense or defense only. “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.”
Hunter was elite on both sides of the ball at Colorado. That’s why he won the Heisman. This is the NFL we’re talking about, though. Plenty of elite college players at one position have struggled to even make it in the league, let alone thrive.
Hunter, ever confident, clearly feels he can be the outlier, though. For what it’s worth, the Giants seem to think so as well.
“We would not be afraid to play him on both sides of the ball,” Giants general manager Joe Schoen said on Wednesday, according to Jordan Raanan of ESPN.
If workload is a concern, keep in mind that Hunter won the Heisman while playing in 86% of Colorado’s total snaps last season. He’s got the stamina to do it.
He also has star talent at both wideout and cornerback. He caught 96 passes for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns last season while also notching 35 tackles (24 solo), four interceptions and 11 passes defended on defense.
New York would be willing, but it does sound like Schoen and the Giants would make sure they’re smart about it. In the NFL, it’s more mental than anything, and the Giants would have to make sure that Hunter can keep up.
“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 said. “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.”
