Travis Hunter played offense and defense in college football and won a Heisman Trophy. He and his college coach Deion Sanders think he can be a two-way player in the NFL too.
But it’s also fair to wonder if that’s realistic. College football and the NFL are practically separate sports, physically and mentally. There’s a reason that in the Super Bowl era, nobody has played both ways for more than a brief amount of time.
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John Harbaugh is one of the NFL’s best coaches. He has been with the Baltimore Ravens for 17 seasons and is on a likely Hall of Fame path. While most of the NFL has publicly said they don’t think it’s impossible for Hunter to play both sides of the ball in the NFL, Harbaugh had a different angle.
Harbaugh was not as optimistic as Hunter about the feasibility of a full-time two-way player in the NFL.
John Harbaugh: ‘I don’t know if there’s enough hours in the day’
Harbaugh didn’t say that someone couldn’t play both ways in the NFL on a limited basis. He said it is possible. Doing it full time might be hard though.
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“To say that you’re going to be completely immersed in everything that there is to know on offense and defense … I don’t know if there’s enough hours in the day for a player to be able to do that,” Harbaugh said via Jamison Hensley of ESPN.
“You certainly can do it, I would think on one side of the ball and then have some sort of a package on the other side of the ball, which is my guess is how the team will do it wherever he goes.”
It’s interesting that Harbaugh mentioned the mental aspect of playing both ways. There has been more focus on how it might wear Hunter down physically.
NFL schemes are more complicated than in college, and pro coaches obsess over details. One player out of place, even one as physically gifted as Hunter, can ruin a whole play against NFL competition. Hunter can’t be in two places at once during position meetings during the week before a game.
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There’s no reason to believe Hunter isn’t immersed in football and wouldn’t put in the time to be as ready as possible on offense and defense. But it will be a heck of a challenge.
Travis Hunter’s excellence on offense and defense led to him winning a Heisman Trophy. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Can Travis Hunter make it as a 2-way player?
Hunter, Deion Sanders and others have taken a similar angle on Hunter’s chances of succeeding as a two-way player in the NFL: Why not? He did it in college, they’ll say, so perhaps he can be the unique player to pull it off in the pros too.
There’s validity to that. Nobody has played both ways as a full-time player since the early-1960s for multiple seasons, but there hasn’t been a player like Hunter since then either. He did it at such a high level in college, it seems to be worth at least trying it in the NFL. Hunter has said he wants to do it. Sanders, who spent a lot of the 1996 season with the Dallas Cowboys playing offense and defense, believes it can be done.
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That’s what the Cleveland Browns and perhaps the New York Giants have to answer. Hunter is very likely to go either with the second pick to the Browns or the third pick to the Giants, and the big question after the Hunter pick will be what that team’s vision is for Hunter.
If a team decides to use Hunter on offense and defense, even in a limited package on one side of the ball as Harbaugh suggested, there will need to be a plan for how to execute it. Hunter seems to be all-in on the idea. We’ll see if the team that drafts him next week is as confident.
This news was originally published on this post .
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