Thor Nystrom delivers the Travis Hunter Scouting Report ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Travis Hunter Jr.
- School: Colorado
- Height/weight: 6'0-3/8 / 188 lbs.
- Comp: Shohei Ohtani
There is much debate about who discovered Travis Hunter Jr. first. His grandmother, Shirley Hunter, has a really strong argument.
When Travis Jr. was five years old, Shirley attended one of his first football practices with the Boynton Beach Bulldogs. Out on that field in West Palm Beach, Florida, little Travis Hunter was throwing perfect spirals left-handed.
Shirley walked up to the coach of the team and said: 'You know he throws with both hands?” The coach gave her a confused look. Shirley clarified that Travis was right-handed. The coach did not believe her. Shirley said: “That's the one.”
If anyone could spot a star athlete, it was Shirley Hunter. Shirley – the 1975 Florida state champion in the 200 meters – had eight children. All were exceptional athletes. The five boys all played football, and three of them were also track stars. Two of the girls were also standout sprinters, the third was a gymnast.
Travis’ father was Shirley’s middle son. When Travis Sr. was 15, he ran a 10.82-second 100-meter dash, coming 1.03 seconds short of the world record at the time. Travis Sr. had Travis Jr. when he was 17. Travis Jr.’s birth ended Travis Sr.’s dreams of playing D1 football. Travis Sr. instead raised one of the best athletes of a generation.
Travis Hunter Jr. moved to Savannah, Georgia, for his freshman year of high school. He was recognized quickly in town as a football superstar. What folks didn’t know was that Travis Jr. was living in a dilapidated hotel that would be torn down soon after he moved out. In a single room with two beds, alongside his mother, stepfather, and three siblings. Travis Jr. often slept on the floor.
Years later, on the campus of the University of Colorado, writers noted the stuffed wolf that Travis Jr. would sometimes wear around his neck. Much like Travis Jr. himself, that wolf became a symbol for strangers to build their own metaphor and meaning out of. If you Google “Travis Hunter stuffed wolf,” the AI synopsis reads that it is “a symbolic representation of [Hunter’s] unique approach to the game and his distinctive personality.”
Sort of, but not exactly.
Hunter Jr. was first spotted with that wolf around his neck walking the halls at Collins Hill High School. He had begun wearing it around his neck to stay warm at night in that cold, crowded hotel room with the finicky wall unit. One day, he simply didn’t take it off when he left for school. At the time, Hunter’s diet consisted of Chipotle, chicken wings, and gummy bears.
In March 2020, Hunter Jr. committed to play at Florida State. The vision was to play with Shedeur Sanders – the son of Hunter’s hero, Deion Sanders. Shedeur (I wrote his scouting profile here) was committed to play for Willie Taggart at his father’s alma mater. Taggart’s firing changed that.
Shedeur flipped to FCS Jackson State, where his father Deion had recently taken over. With Coach Prime installed and Shedeur on the way, Travis Jr. was persuaded to secretly visit the campus of Jackson State in advance of Signing Day.
On December 15, 2021, Travis Hunter did something that had never been done before. The consensus No. 1 recruit in America flipped to an FCS school.
According to ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, college coaches were less shocked than the public. A Power 4 assistant who did an in-home visit with Hunter leading up to Signing Day that year called his head coach with an update as he was leaving. "[Hunter] talked about Deion Sanders the entire time," the assistant said. "He knew everything about him. We're wasting our time."
After one season at JSU, Hunter left with the Sanders family for Colorado. In 2024, Travis Hunter Jr. won the Heisman Trophy. In two years, he, Shedeur, and Coach Prime turned a 1-11 program into a 9-4 Big 12 contender.
Travis Hunter Scouting Report
They call Travis Hunter a unicorn. Hunter is a full-time two-way player. Last season, Hunter led the nation with 1,360 snaps played — 688 on defense, 672 on offense.
He is a legitimate game-changer on both sides of the ball. If Travis Hunter Jr. were only a wide receiver, he’d be WR1 in this class without a debate. And if Travis Hunter Jr. were only a cornerback, he’d be CB1 in this class without a debate.
We start where we left off above: This guy is a touched-by-God athlete. He’s got it all. The speed. The explosive acceleration. The agility. The fluidity.
We’ve seen superhero athletes before. We see them every class. What makes Travis Hunter different is the instincts and skills he augments that athleticism with on both sides of the ball.
Latest NFL Mock Draft: Thor has Travis Hunter going No. 3
"I've said this probably to all 32 NFL teams, but he has some superpowers," Colorado OC Pat Shurmur – former HC of the Browns, Giants and Eagles (interim) – said. "And his most obvious one is his ball skills.”
Those play on both sides of the ball. On defense, Hunter tied for No. 10 in the FBS with 1.2 passes defensed per game in 2024. He added 4 interceptions. Hunter’s time with Deion Sanders started to show real dividends in 2024, as he leveled-up as a corner.
That was in part because Hunter did not have an Elic Ayomanor game last season. In 2023, Ayomanor posted an absurd 13-294-3 receiving line in a wild 2OT upset win over Colorado. PFF charted Hunter as responsible for 11 of the catches for 158 of the yards and two TD.
This game gets brought up often. In the other eight games Hunter played in that season, he allowed 256 combined receiving yards – 32.0 per game. Pretty good. But nothing like we saw last year.
In 2024, Hunter’s PFF coverage grade spiked from 74.7 to 90.3. His QB rating against was a microscopic 39.9. Hunter allowed a minuscule 17.1 receiving yards per game – nearly half as many as the non-Ayomanor games in 2023! Hunter was targeted 43 times in 2024. He got his hands on nearly half as many balls (11) as were completed against him (23).
As Shurmur noted, Hunter’s ludicrous ball skills are all over his cornerback tape. You test him at your own peril – 50/50 balls against Travis Hunter last year were almost literally the odds your receiver would get hands on the ball instead of him.
Hunter has all the athleticism he needs to stay with the feet, propulsion, and route-running of any receiver. He has a knack for triggering at the opportune time to get involved at the catch point – the ball rarely beats him to the spot. Hunter erases the efficiency of the receiver across from him. Beating him short or intermediate is exceedingly difficult.
The area where we saw Hunter get selectively beaten – Ayomanor being the famous example – was down the field in one-on-one coverage. Coaches trust Hunter on an island, as they should. But his quick-trigger game has at times gotten him burned when his man goes downtown because his upright, prowler style is not as advantageous for hip-flipping.
Hunter is not a finesse player – he’s actually a pretty good tackler, and his work in run defense continues to improve year-by-year. Hunter flipped a game against Baylor last year on a tackle attempt, forcing a fumble at the goal line in OT to seal a win.
If you were to put any trait against Hunter’s ball-skills, it would be his ability to maintain top speed in-and-out of cuts. It tricks your eyes. This is why you can’t beat him underneath. It’s also why he’s so dang hard to stick with as a receiver – it’s like trying to mirror the movements of a hummingbird.
Read more: Should Travis Hunter Play Wide Receiver AND Cornerback in the NFL?
Hunter plays bigger than his 6-foot, 188-pound billing as a receiver because of the physics-defying things he can do with his body, and the distended catch radius this gives him along with his length.
Hunter is an acrobatic contortionist at the moment of truth, turning poorly-thrown balls into routine completions. His wingspan is solidly above-average for NFL cornerbacks, and is only one inch south of pterodactyl Arizona WR Tetairoa McMillan.
These traits, of course, make Hunter a contested catch virtuoso and a downfield assassin. Last season, he went 11-for-18 in contested situations, going 5-of-10 deep downfield. On balls thrown 20+ yards downfield, Hunter posted a perfect 99.9 PFF grade with 15.44 YPRR.
There has been much discussion about which position Hunter will play in the NFL. Let me put it to bed for you: He’s playing both ways. Travis Hunter intends to become the Shohei Ohtani of football, and your offense cannot afford to keep him off the field.
Hunter is going to be a full-time cornerback. As a rookie, I ballpark that he’ll additionally play around 40% of his team’s offensive snaps. I believe the team that takes him will have a “Travis Hunter Playbook” for when he’s on the field, with plays designed to get him the ball. I believe Hunter’s rookie receiving numbers will surprise people.
We haven’t seen anything quite like Travis Hunter enter the NFL over the past decade. He is the best prospect in this class.
