Strike 1: A couple of former Colorado Buffaloes packed plenty of bravado in their Gucci luggage for their workout-less trip to Indianapolis.
Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter certainly talked a big game when they met with media folks at the NFL Combine, even though they chose not to actually display any of the skills they boasted about. They’ll have the chance to back up some of the talk when they perform in front of NFL scouts at CU’s Pro Day in a few weeks.
Most of what Sanders said was perfectly in line with what Team Sanders has always said: Basically, ‘nobody does it better’ and all that. Shedeur talked about “turning around the culture” at two college programs, Jackson State and CU, conveniently putting aside the part about his next stop in the NFL being a much much larger leap (without his dad).
Time will tell of course. No one in the NFL, especially the folks that operate the team Shedeur is drafted by, will care one tiny bit about the last name he consistently touts once the first football gets snapped.
There’s also no shortage of confidence coming from Hunter, who continues to insist he’s going to play both wide receiver and cornerback full time in the NFL.
Spoiler alert: He’s wrong. That’s not going to happen.
Let’s start here: Travis Hunter is among a pretty large group of elite college athletes capable of performing amazing feats of speed and strength on a football field. To believe that Hunter is the only athlete in the recent history of college football that was or is physically and mentally capable of playing both defensive back and wide receiver in the same game is being naïve. For instance, if Ohio State’s amazing wide receiver Jeremiah Smith had decided to go to Jackson State based on a promise from his coach Deion Sanders that he could play on both sides of the football, what do we think would have happened? Smith would have and most certainly could have played both ways. That goes for several dozen other uber-talented college football players as well.
It’s been done before on a limited basis, including when Denver Broncos Hall of Famer Champ Bailey was a star at the University of Georgia. The only thing totally unique about Hunter is that his head coach allowed him to play both ways full time.
His professional coaches won’t do the same for several good reasons, including the fact that the defensive backs and wide receivers are coached by different position coaches who hold important position-specific meetings in different places at the same time several days a week. Coaches consider full time attendance in position meetings to be mandatory. Not even Hunter is fast enough to be in two places at once, and in the NFL he won’t be given special consideration.
And then there’s the overwhelming physical part of trying to both take and administer heavy blows to opponents on a regular basis. The slightly built Hunter simply wouldn’t be able to take all that punishment unless he opted out of tackling.
In the NFL, Hunter is either going to be a DB who occasionally sees the field as a wide out, or a full time receiver who occasionally gets inserted in specialty defensive sets.
Meanwhile, back in DeionLand, Team Hunter is cultivating comparisons between himself and baseball mega-star Shohei Ohtani. Some in the media are on-board with this utter nonsense as well.
For those who still see things through Deion’s black and gold colored sunglasses lenses, try to understand this: When he’s on the football field, Hunter occupies the same space on the field and uses the same skill set whether his team has the ball or not. He has great hands and feet. He uses them exceptionally well to be a terrific football player outside the hash marks.
Once again, if you’re focused on just the physical part, there could be two dozen or more DB/WR’s playing both ways in the NFL in any given season if coaches chose to go that way. Example: Does anyone think that the Broncos Pat Surtain II could not physically play wide receiver too?
On the other hand, Ohtani is a once-every-hundred-years professional baseball player, performing at an All-Star/MVP level in two areas of an extremely difficult (playing six times a week) sport that requires two very different skill sets. To be able to be an All-Star Major League pitcher is a full-time, all-encompassing year ‘round kind of task. Then, to be able to be an MVP-level offensive player at the same time, which also requires full-time, all-encompassing year ‘round training and dedication?
Ohtani might not be from this planet. He’s certainly in a world of his own.
Guys like Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star pitcher Paul Skenes were standout two-way players in college baseball before they had to concentrate on just one specific aspect of the sport in order to be their best and stay healthy. And believe it or not, football is even more specialized than baseball.
Travis Hunter is not a unicorn. He’s not superhuman, he’s just going to be another excellent one-side-of-the-ball professional football player. That should be enough gratification for even the Cult of Sanders.
