Travis Hunter is an anomaly in the fantasy landscape that we all are trying to figure out. As someone who is going to play both ways, he is ideal for IDP formats. For non-IDP formats, his floor/ceiling is going to vary greatly depending on the answers to questions like:
-
How much offense is he going to play?
-
What is his production going to be like?
-
Is he good enough to play both sides of the ball at an elite level?
-
Is he going to hunt down and stop the other WRs on my team or be hunted down?
All these questions leading to the big one of, where should I draft him in my rookie drafts?
This is where I’m hoping to come in and shed some light on what Hunter accomplished in college on a deeper level and how I expect it to translate into the NFL. I wanted to see how his stats compared to the other WRs in this class, while also comparing the numbers some to last year’s big three: Marvin Harrison Jr., Rome Odunze, and Malik Nabers to see how he stood up against their generational talent.
This is going to be an analytical analysis of Hunter. I’m not just going to be showing your typical stats, rather I went deeper to see a more true picture of what Hunter could be, so without further ado let’s dive in.
The first conclusion I came to is that I expect Hunter to run less routes and play less offensive snaps in the NFL. This might not seem like a big reveal to some, but there’s been buzz how Hunter will be playing more offense and less defense, so I wanted to approach this first. Outside of the fact that the player’s in the NFL are stronger, better, faster than college, I was shocked as to how much offense Hunter actually played last year. Let’s take a look at his offensive snap stats
To summarize, here’s the picture I see painted for Hunter thus far:
-
We should expect him to play less offensive snaps
-
This will cause his yardage is going to drop as he doesn’t have high yards per route run and yards per reception
-
He is great at catching the ball and is going to catch a high percentage of the balls thrown his way
In other words, expecting him to have a good number of receptions with a low total yardage translates to someone with a good floor but a low ceiling in fantasy formats.
Thus in formats that support WRs getting receptions, Hunter is still a good WR to have on your team, while formats that don’t support receptions for WRs well should have you fading Hunter down your boards more.
To complete this, I will answer the question I made to start this off: Where should you draft Hunter in your rookie drafts?
As always it depends on your league format but in general, Hunter should be going in the mid-late 1st of your rookie drafts. As someone with an expected strong floor he is going to be a perfect plug and play in your Flex spot. His limited ceiling is going to prevent you from wanting him as your WR1/2 on a top tier competing team. He is still worth that mid-late 1st due to the consistency and athleticism he is going to provide