Travis Hunter: The Most Polarizing Player In Fantasy Football

Talking through Travis Hunter's 2025 ADP and whether he's a good pick considering his unique situation.

Travis Hunter has unsurprisingly been stirring up a lot of conversation on social media, specifically so in the fantasy community. After this report dropped about Hunter’s camp snaps, where he has been slightly more involved on defense, the ant-Hunter cohort consequently started to victory lap their bags. However, I think this report is essentially meaningless, which I highlighted here. I’ll break this down below, and go more in-depth on what Hunter’s 2025 range of outcomes look like.

Talks of Travis Hunter and what his role might look like will undoubtedly continue to heat up. He’s one of the most polarizing fantasy picks in recent memory if not ever, and you won’t find many landing on the middle of the spectrum. It’s either one of the best ADPs ever, or “you’re drafting a CB in round 5?”.

With all this chatter on Hunter, and with said chatter certain to continue, it felt like an opportune time to breakdown his situation. Let’s figure out if he’s a good pick at ADP or not.

Table of Contents

I. Travis Hunter: The College Profile

II. Why Camp Snaps Are Irrelevant

III. Why Hunter Can Payoff Without A Full-Time Route Share

IV. Offensive Environment And Coaching

V. Upside Is Everything

Travis Hunter: The College Profile

It’s important to understand the caliber of WR prospect that Hunter is in order to grasp the upside he possesses. I think sometimes his prospect profile as a WR gets diminished simply due to his ability as a CB. “He’s a way better CB than WR” or “He only got drafted that high because he plays both ways” many will say. While the second quote is likely valid, it undermines how good of a prospect he is on the offensive side of the ball. His WR profile alone would easily make him a mid 1st round pick, if not higher. Many draft analysts and scouts had him as the WR1 in this class, above 8th overall pick Tet McMillan.

By the numbers, Hunter proves to be an awesome player in many facets. While his career 2.42 yards per route run (YPRR) is not incredibly elite, it is 9th best among 40 WR prospects in this class. Hunter also had a very high rate of “throwaway” routes, where he was a decoy or ran a fake route on the opposite side of the play. PFF charts these as routes, so it naturally depresses his per route metrics. Hunter’s 0.24 targets per route run (TPRR) is similarly strong, while not elite.

Outside of per route numbers, Hunter possesses some really great indicators of his ability as a WR. Starting with Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception, Hunter is a truly great separator. Harmon has Hunter at a 92nd percentile man coverage beater, 97th percentile vs. press coverage, AND 97th percentile vs. zone. Hunter was at an above average success route on every single route on the tree. Insane.

With the ball in his hands, Hunter was also great in college. His 0.276 MTF/Rec is a really strong mark, and was 5th best in this class. While Hunter did not test at the combine, he was projected for a sub 4.4 40-time. He is an athletic freak, as you simply have to be to consistently play both sides of the ball at such a high level. He’s a guy you want to get the ball to frequently so that he can make plays with the ball in his hands.

So Hunter can get open at will and is dynamic after the catch, but that’s not all. He was elite bringing in contested targets in college, consistently winning at the catch-point. Throughout his collegiate career, the 6’1” wide receiver brought in 19 of 30 contested targets, good for a 63.3% rate that was 3rd best in the entire class. He was similarly strong this past season, grabbing 11 of 17 contested targets for a 64.7% contested catch rate.

Unsurprisingly, Hunter had a high passer rating when targeted, indicating his QB-friendly traits. A career 137.8 passer rating when targeted was easily the best mark in this class.

No matter how you look at it, Hunter is an awesome WR prospect. He has several elite traits that give him what seems like underrated upside at the position. Don’t let anyone tell you this man can’t be a top 10 WR in the NFL.

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Why Camp Snaps Are Irrelevant

If you didn’t click on the above report I referenced in the intro, here it is screen-shotted above. Basically, what I broke down in my post on X (also linked above), is that these snaps don’t really mean anything and they basically tell us nothing.

What you’ll see on X now is people taking these snap counts and claiming “Looks like Hunter is going to play 60% defense and 40% offense”, or something along those lines. There a few flaws here. First and foremost, extrapolating these snaps into a potential in-game split is fundamentally wrong. In camp, Hunter’s offense and defense are quite literally facing each other, and Hunter obviously cannot be in two places at the same exact time. This means that Hunter can only see 100% of the total snaps from camp, and they therefore have to be divvied up between offense and defense.

Conversely, in an actual game, there are technically 200% of snaps available for Hunter to play. 100% of the offensive snaps, and 100% of the defensive snaps. Obviously, Hunter will not be playing every snap on both sides. However, we know Hunter was drafted to play both sides of the ball, and it feels pretty clear that Jacksonville didn’t trade up from 1.05 to 1.02 (and sacrifice a 2026 1st round pick) to pigeon-hole him to one side. Considering this, Hunter getting 120% of the 200% of snaps feels like his floor, and I’d argue we could see him get all the way up to 160%.

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Why Hunter Can Payoff Without A Full-Time Route Share