SANTA CLARA — In the days leading up to the 2025 season, Charles Woodson of Fox Sports sat down with Travis Hunter, a pair of Heisman Trophy winners renowned for excelling on offense and defense.
But even Woodson had to concede what he did at Michigan and in an 18-year NFL Hall of Fame career with the Raiders and Green Bay Packers is dwarfed in significance by what Hunter is trying to accomplish as the second pick of the draft out of Colorado for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“They try to compare my career, your career, but man, what you did is so much different,” Woodson said. “I’d say you’re much more like Shohei Ohtani.”
Ohtani’s hitting and pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers is unparalleled since the early days of Babe Ruth, one of the great contemporary wonders of any professional sport. He was a phenomenon from the moment he stepped on the diamond in 2013.
Hunter, 22, is three games into his NFL career as a cornerback and wide receiver and there are no guarantees he’ll reach anywhere near the two-way superstardom the way Ohtani has in major league baseball.
He’ll line up as a slot receiver and an outside cornerback when the 49ers (3-0) host the Jacksonville Jaguars (2-1) Sunday at Levi’s Stadium (1:05 p.m., Fox). Through the small sample size of three games, Hunter has yet to reinvent the sport.
On offense, Hunter (6-foot-1, 185 pounds) has 10 receptions for 76 yards. He has started one of three games on defense and has nine tackles and one pass defensed. He doesn’t have a touchdown or a big play of note on either side of the ball.
“Whenever it comes, it comes,” Hunter told reporters Thursday. “It’s God’s plan. I’m just out there doing my job and hopefully it comes soon.”
Opinion was split among NFL teams as to whether Hunter would thrive as a wide receiver or cornerback. The Jaguars leaned in to the idea of letting Hunter do both, as he did at Colorado with spectacular results. They even swung a big trade with Cleveland to move from No. 5 to No. 2 to draft him.
Jaguars rookie head coach Liam Coen was on board, of course, but he is already wondering if they’ve given Hunter more than he can handle.
“I think we can probably do a better job of helping him in some ways,” Coen said. “We had a great talk with Trav after this past game in terms of, like, how can we help you? We’ve got to be more diligent in terms of putting him in positions to maybe not have as many moving parts so we can let him just go play.”
While the production hasn’t been there yet, the 49ers are impressed that he’s even attempting to play both ways.
“I’ve never done it. I can’t fathom it,” left tackle Trent Williams said. “I think it would be really hard to master both. More power to him.”
“I think it’s awesome,” running back Christian McCaffrey said. “It’s rare you see somebody play both sides of the ball.”
As good as Woodson was at Michigan, he caught 11 passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns in his Heisman year of 1997. The following year, Champ Bailey of Georgia was a star cornerback and caught 47 passes for 744 yards and five touchdowns. Like Woodson, he had a Hall of Fame career as a corner with Washington and Denver and had four career receptions for 89 yards.
The St. Louis Cardinals had a receiver named Roy Green who caught 33 passes for 708 yards while a full-time corner in 1981, but he was exclusively a receiver after three seasons.
Travis Hunter (12) covers Houston wide receiver Nico Collins of Houston in a Week 3 game in Jacksonville A.P. Photo
Hunter rarely left the field at Colorado and in two seasons had 171 receptions for 2,167 yards and 24 touchdowns and 87 tackles, nine interceptions and 26 pass breakups for the Buffaloes.
Deion Sanders, his college coach at Jackson State and Colorado, is another Hall of Fame corner who dabbled at wide receiver, catching 36 passes for 475 yards one year with the Dallas Cowboys.
In Hunter’s first three games, he has played 42, 42 and 37 snaps on offense and six snaps, 43 and 43 on defense. Sanders, talking recently on the New Heights podcast, feels he’s being underutilized in Jacksonville.
“They’re not using him enough,” Sanders said. “I’ve seen with my own eyes on an everyday basis for three straight years, so I know what he’s capable of. He practices on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. He was ready to play a hundred and some snaps on Saturday, so you didn’t need to use him on a Tuesday or a Monday. You don’t use him like that.”
But the NFL, in terms of meeting times and preparation, is considerably more grueling than a college season. And Coen’s plan isn’t to have Hunter branch out and play receiver positions other than in the slot or have him move from an outside corner spot. Not yet, anyway.
Ricky Pearsall Jr., the 49ers’ second-year wide receiver, played defense in high school as did many of his teammates. But at the highest level, the notion of running deep pass routes and then staying on the field to chase down 4.4 wide receivers instead is a foreign concept.
“I can’t imagine it. Not in the league,” Pearsall said. “It takes a lot of brain power, a lot of athleticism to even do that. Knowing exactly where you need to be on both sides of the ball, that’s impressive in itself. There’s a physical challenge, but mentally is probably just as challenging.”
It was unlikely the 49ers at No. 11 would have had any shot at Hunter, but they scouted him just in case. Coach Kyle Shanahan sounded as if he’d have given it a shot initially.
“I mean, it’s a challenge, definitely,” Shanahan said. “Not many people have done it, but he definitely, based off film, was the guy you want to do it with. I mean, he was that good of a corner and that good of a receiver. So to see that, anybody would try that.”
Robert Saleh, the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, has utilized prize rookie Mykel Williams at both end and tackle, and sounded apprehensive about someone playing both offense and defense.
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“He is uber talented and from everything we gathered during the draft process, he’s an elite human in terms of work ethic and energy that he brings to the building,” Saleh said. “But I mean, you guys see how I speak about Mykel. I’m nervous about him playing outside and inside on the d-line, let alone two sides of the ball.”
Klay Kubiak, the 49ers’ offensive coordinator, credited Hunter for having the desire to master both positions.
“It’s what we loved about him coming out of college,” Kubiak said. “I’ve never seen a player like that, who wants every snap, doesn’t want to come out of the game on offense or defense. It’s a guy who’s clearly wired the right way to be a football player.”