Hunter will be one of the top picks in this year’s draft.
Travis Hunter the cornerback and Travis Hunter the wide receiver are the same person. For the New England Patriots’ scouting department, however, they very well might not be.
The reigning Heisman Trophy Winner, who is expected to be in play for the Patriots with the fourth overall selection in the draft, has forced the team to adapt its scouting methods. As executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf explained this year, the team is working off of two separate reports on him.
“Not to give anything away, but Matt Groh actually wrote two separate scouting reports on him when he went to Colorado this year. He has one wide receiver report and one corner report,” Wolf explained during a recent interview with Mike Dussault and Evan Lazar of patriots.com.
“Now, he’s the only one who did that; everyone else kind of tried to jam everything into the space that we have. But it’s tough when you’re talking about a player who does so many different things to fit it all in there.”
The Patriots currently have a two-way option on their roster: Marcus Jones, a third-round selection in 2022, is a starting cornerback who also has been part of offensive packages in the past.
Hunter, however, is a different beast in that regard. The Colorado product finished his 2024 junior season with four interceptions and a forced fumble as a starting cornerback, and added 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as the Buffaloes’ leading receiver.
While it remains to be seen how the Patriots and other NFL teams view his contributions at the next level, Hunter himself remains steadfast in his belief that he can play both ways on a full-time basis.
“They say nobody has ever done it the way that I do it, but I tell them I’m just different, I’m a different person,” Hunter said during his Combine media availability.
“I know I can do it. There are a lot more breaks in the NFL.”
The aforementioned Marcus Jones is not the only two-way player the Patriots worked with through the years. In the past, they used the likes of Troy Brown or Julian Edelman to play on both offense and defense.
New head coach Mike Vrabel also saw part-time action as a tight end on top of his regular duties as a linebacker — something he reminded Hunter of during their meeting at the Scouting Combine.
“I’m sure Travis doesn’t even know, but we were kind of jawing back and forth as he left last night,” Vrabel told NFL Network on Thursday. “I said, ‘You’re not the only one that played two ways. There were some other guys that did this too.’ He kind of like looked at me, and we laughed.”