Travis Hunter Isn't as Risky as You Think

Over the past week, Travis Hunter has been drafted as the WR30 on Underdog. On traditional platforms like ESPN and Yahoo!, he’s going similarly as the WR27. In both cases, he’s fallen precisely into the range where I’m excited to draft him.

In this article, I’ll cover every angle of the tricky Travis Hunter decision in both best ball and traditional managed fantasy football leagues for 2025. By the end, perhaps you’ll be as convinced as I am that he’s a potentially league-winning selection at his current ADP.

How Good Is Travis Hunter, And How High Is His Fantasy Football Ceiling?

Evaluating him only as a WR, Hunter is an excellent prospect. To quote from analytical prospecting master Scott Barrett’s pre-NFL Draft breakdown, “By career personnel-adjusted YPRR, Hunter (+91%) easily clears all other projected Round 1-2 WRs in this year’s class, and is much closer to a Malik Nabers (+105%) or Marvin Harrison Jr. (+104%) than a Tet McMillan (+69%) or Luther Burden (+77%).” By age-adjusted yards per team pass attempt (YPTPA), Hunter’s best season ranked in the 88th percentile, compared to the 93rd percentile for McMillan’s best season.

Scott was open to the idea that Hunter was the best WR prospect in the class. My back-of-the-napkin evaluation was that Hunter ranked behind McMillan from an analytical perspective, but clearly ahead of the rest of the class.

The broad consensus from the film community was similar. Hunter (purely as a WR) easily ranked as Lance Zierlein’s best in the class. From Fantasy Points film genius Brett Whitefield’s prospect guide, “He has the potential to be a top-10 WR in the NFL if a team chooses that path for him…as a WR alone, he would score somewhere around 17th to 20th [among all players at all positions in the 2025 draft class].” The social media refrain that Hunter would not have gone 2nd overall were he solely a WR is likely true, but few in the Draft community would have blinked seeing him go in the mid-1st.

In a hypothetical world where Hunter was selected as a WR by the Jaguars after they traded down to 18th overall, he’d likely be going back-to-back with Tetairoa McMillan (about 1.0 round higher on Underdog). And in that universe, nobody would question his upside: we just watched new Jaguars HC Liam Coen engineer WR2 and WR10 finishes for Chris Godwin and Mike Evans by FPG, with the offense ranking top-3 in overall fantasy points per route run.

Sophomore phenom Brian Thomas Jr. is present, but there’s virtually no other target competition on this team, leaving plenty of room for targets to consolidate around two talented WRs. Evans and Godwin combined for a 54.3% first-read target share in their games together (14.7 combined targets per game), and Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence is notorious for locking onto his first read.

This in itself is sufficient evidence of Hunter’s league-winning potential should he play near-full-time snaps on offense. But it gets better: since 2010, an average of 1.4 rookie WRs per season have put up 16.0+ FPG over the second half of the year (per Ron Stewart). Rookies are by far the most common group of players to appear on ESPN championship rosters, as the ADP market has consistently underrated just how impactful these first-year breakouts are, even as they’ve become significantly more frequent over the past decade.

In a nutshell, Hunter’s ceiling is that of a top-12 fantasy WR down the stretch, comparable to what Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, or Puka Nacua did as rookies (remember, all three were presumed to be behind Adam Thielen, Tee Higgins, and Cooper Kupp in Year 1, respectively). Let’s move on to arguing whether that’s worth chasing, given everything else we know.

Why Downside Outcomes Don’t Matter

Since we know the least about rookies compared to any other group of players, fantasy managers tend to focus too much on the median and downside outcomes — what if he isn’t any good in the NFL? But that’s precisely why they are such excellent values.

In managed leagues, these downside outcomes in reality matter very little — Upside Wins Championships, after all — as it is pretty easy for any manager to fill a lineup spot with a baseline ~11.0 FPG of WR production (45 different receivers hit this mark in 2024, while 55 receivers averaged 10.0+ FPG). If a rookie busts from the middle rounds, you can simply replace him with one of the “floor” producers abundant in the later rounds or on the waiver wire. The truly scarce resource in fantasy football is league-winning upside — we generally see no more than 6-20 players post a well-above-average playoff win rate in any given season.

Even in best ball, your Round 5 pick busting doesn’t even come close to killing your team; last year’s Best Ball Mania winner selected Isiah Pacheco in Round 5 and received zero performances of more than 7.1 Underdog points after Week 2. In a tournament with over 670,000 entrants, we should be interested in selecting players who possess a wide range of outcomes with non-premium picks.

Is Hunter More Risky Than A Normal Round 1 Rookie WR?

Yes, but by a relatively negligible (~5-10%) amount. Here’s why.

Hunter’s naysayers point out that on top of our typical downside outcome for a rookie WR — What if he isn’t any good in the NFL? — we must also consider a second path to Hunter busting: What if he doesn’t play enough snaps at WR? After all, we’ve never (within the Fantasy Points Data era) seen a WR finish top-45 at the position while running a route on fewer than 66% of a team’s dropbacks. Even dipping into the territory of a 70% route share is enough to massively ding a WR’s upside, as this Malik Nabers hypothetical demonstrates.

The counterargument here goes something like this: Hunter could not pan out as a WR talent, just like other rookies. He could also be very good when he plays offense, but run only a relatively limited route share. He needs to hit a parlay of simultaneously being great at WR and playing offense enough to pay off.

But this implies that the two downside outcomes above (“Hunter isn’t that good” and “Hunter doesn’t play enough”) are independent. And I’m not surprised that this is how much of the industry has approached Hunter, because it’s the typical way we think about conditional probability in fantasy football. For a handcuff RB to pay off, the starter in front of him must get injured AND the backup you choose must consolidate most of the backfield’s workload in his absence, a sequence of events less likely to occur together than alone. But I think it’s incorrect to apply this logic to Hunter, and I’ll demonstrate why with the following hypothetical.

Let’s imagine that Dave Canales told you he would play Tetairoa McMillan on only 40% of the routes if he felt he wasn’t outperforming Xavier Legette. Would that change how you rank McMillan?

I don’t believe it should. If McMillan isn't dunking all over Legette, he'd be a fantasy football bust and a lost pick anyway. It doesn't really matter whether he's being a bust on an 80% route share or a 40% route share; he’s not making your lineup in best ball or outproducing waiver wire options in seasonal leagues either way.

Applied to Hunter, in the same way, I’d argue that “Hunter is bad on offense” and “Hunter doesn’t play enough snaps on offense” are overlapping scenarios describing the same outcome. I could envision Hunter playing in only select packages for a ~30-50% route share if he’s not making all that big of a difference to the offense. I can’t imagine him being held to that for long if he’s undeniably great. A reduced route share is only likely in a world where Hunter wasn't that great anyway.

The better we assume Hunter is, the less likely it is that his route share is so restrictive as to prevent him from being a strong fantasy asset. Whatever likelihood you assign to both occurring (Hunter is great, but has a low route share) is the percentage of additional risk he carries compared to other rookies. This is where I arrived at the 5-10% number at the top of this section.

That’s partially because the decision-makers in Jacksonville are highly incentivized to play Hunter on offense, as I’ll explain below. But even in that 5-10% world, Hunter still has outs to return value, as I’ll explain after.

Why Hunter Will Likely Play A Lot Of Offense

Let’s game out the Jaguars’ offense for a moment.

Before the Draft, the team signed Dyami Brown to a surprisingly lucrative ~$10 million contract. He’s received a constant drumbeat of praise from the coaching staff all offseason, making him the odds-on favorite to be this team’s 3rd receiver in a field-stretching role. Notably, he ran 76% of his routes last year from out wide.

Brian Thomas Jr. is set to be the offense’s centerpiece. Liam Coen is on record stating he wants to move Thomas all around the formation, both in and out of the slot. This varied usage, along with Thomas’s effectiveness on shallow routes, creates a compelling upside case for him (as I laid out in full here). But it also likely confirms he won’t play full-time in the slot — the ~34%-37% slot rates we saw from Ja’Marr Chase and Drake London in 2024 would seem like reasonable points of comparison to strive toward, given Thomas’s ~29% slot rate as a rookie — leaving several slot snaps unaccounted for.

That’s even more clearly the case from examining Coen’s personnel tendencies. Coen ranked 8th in 11 personnel (71.7%) with the Buccaneers last year, or 3rd (79.7%) through the first 7 weeks before Chris Godwin was lost for the season. This coaching tree’s progenitor, Sean McVay, has run the 2nd-highest, highest, highest, and highest rate of 11 personnel over the past four seasons. I expect the Jaguars to have 3 WRs on the field at a very high rate in 2025.^[1]

Travis Hunter is left as the most likely option to soak up any slot snaps not occupied by Thomas. The only other WRs you've heard of on this team are Parker Washington (career 1.01 YPRR) and Trenton Irwin (career 1.18 YPRR). Each possesses some slot experience, but neither is a particularly dynamic playmaker that a fanbase or ownership would tolerate watching play over a good Round 1 rookie.

For an offensive-minded first-time HC like Coen, not having to play these scrubs would seem a bigger in-season priority to me than Hunter playing snaps on defense. If one has to come at the expense of the other, Coen knows which side of the ball he is primarily being judged on. His job is much less likely to be at risk if the team’s secondary is subpar for yet another season, compared to if Trevor Lawrence and the offense can’t find their footing.

NFL Network’s Cameron Wolfe’s reporting reflects the idea that this is the team’s thinking. According to Wolfe, the team believes Hunter “can impact the game a little bit more as a wide receiver” than as a cornerback. This view is backed up by contract values across the NFL — per OverTheCap, 13 WRs are currently on deals with $12 million or more guaranteed per year, while only one CB (Derek Stingley) has this distinction. Even if Hunter is currently a better CB than WR, the team rightfully recognizes they will need a significant contribution from Hunter on offense for him to pay off the haul of three top-40 picks they gave up to acquire him.

How Hunter Could Be The First Fantasy-Relevant WR On A ~50% Route Share Ever (Seriously)

If Liam Coen truly ends up in a bind — let’s say Hunter ends up too important to the Jaguars’ defense to play more than half the snaps on offense — there’s a significant chance he could make Hunter a usable fantasy asset regardless. That’s because he’s a master at maximizing a player’s impact on limited snaps.

If you only counted his routes from the slot, Chris Godwin would have had an effective 52% route participation rate in 2024 under Coen. We can’t cleanly assume Hunter would just enter the game to play slot on every snap the Buccaneers want to throw out of 11 personnel, but as we covered, he’s a strong candidate to see a lot of work there.

On that effective 52% route share from the slot alone, Godwin averaged a 29% TPRR, 5.9 targets per game, and 12.0 Underdog FPG (or 14.3 PPR FPG) in 2024. If that were Hunter's usage, he would easily pay off his cost — again, on just a 52% route share. And for anyone like Scott Barrett who is skeptical of Hunter as a candidate to receive screen targets due to his lack of demonstrated YAC ability, the production for Godwin above contains fewer than 1.0 screens per game.

And that’s not the only time we’ve seen Coen pull such a magic trick. When he was the Rams’ OC in 2022, Cooper Kupp averaged 5.2 targets/game and 9.3 Underdog FPG (or 11.4 FPG in PRR) from the slot, on an effective 46% route share. Even that would make Hunter only a push at ADP — the expected finish for the WR30 by ADP over the last four seasons is about 11.2 FPG in PPR scoring. Kupp did this on just over 1.0 designed target per game, a number Hunter could even beat if screen god Coen does choose to use him that way.

This isn’t to say that Hunter will smash on a 50% route share. However, with this coach, there is a demonstrated path to him being fine at cost, even in what I view as the unlikely scenario that he is excellent yet doesn’t play close to a full-time route share.

Why I’m Not Worried About A Few Other Random Anti-Hunter Arguments

Is Hunter’s injury risk significantly higher than that of other WRs if he plays both ways?

I’m not really convinced of this. This study and this study.) found slightly lower injury rates among defensive backs than among WRs, so unless Hunter’s combined snap rate begins to get well above 120% (in which case, you’ve probably already won on the pick), I’m not sold on this being of particularly great concern.

Could the team slow-play Hunter’s usage early in the year to see what he can handle?

I’d be more worried about this if 1) all fantasy formats we play didn’t heavily reward production from Weeks 15-17, and 2) if this were a team, QB, HC, and GM with nothing to prove early in the regular season, a la the Kansas City Chiefs. The reality is the exact opposite.

Is Hunter at greater risk of getting worn down across the season, leading him to play fewer offensive snaps in the Week 15-17 games that matter most?

That’s definitely possible, or at least more likely than for a typical rookie. (Though we’ve seen this exact thing happen before for older players like Alvin Kamara, and it’s perhaps just as large a risk for ones like Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, and Christian McCaffrey at even earlier ADPs.)

But the Jaguars’ schedule could be of some help here. Most of their long-haul travel occurs coming out of their Week 8 bye, with trips to Las Vegas, Houston, and Arizona from Weeks 9-12. But after the team plays in nearby Nashville in Week 13, they get two consecutive home games in Weeks 14 and 15 before shorter trips to Denver and Indianapolis finish off the fantasy football season. And that’s all after they play at home for 5 of their first 7 games, with only one trip to the West Coast in that time.

I don’t want to overstate this angle — the Jaguars will actually log the 4th-most miles traveled in the league in 2025 — but again, the bulk of those come out of the bye and well before the fantasy playoffs. And if the team is in a close race for the division or a playoff spot, I’d expect Hunter to push to play every snap he possibly can.

Will the Jaguars be quick to pull Hunter from games where they’re up multiple scores in the 4th quarter?

Probably. But 1) this happens to other players as well, and 2) if the team is up multiple scores, there’s a good chance Hunter helped them accomplish that. This is something we’ll want to consider in DFS during any weeks where the Jaguars are big favorites, but across a full season, he could theoretically make up for this by playing even more snaps in any close games.

TL;DR Version:

• Hunter is an excellent WR prospect, and rookie WRs are generally well-positioned to greatly exceed their cost due to uncertainty discounts over the past several seasons.

• The odds of him being great on offense in the NFL and playing a lot of snaps on offense in the NFL are correlated with each other. If he doesn’t play a lot of snaps, he probably wasn’t an amazing player and wasn’t going to pay off his cost anyway.

• There's good reason to believe this offense depends upon Hunter being around at least a ~50% route share, and that the team would strongly prefer him to be even higher.

• Through some Liam Coen magic, Hunter could meet his cost even in that worst-case scenario. The floor is not actually that scary, and floor generally matters much less in fantasy football than most believe.

• I am happily selecting Hunter as the WR30 in best ball drafts, and will end up well above market on him if he continues to slide even further past players like Zay Flowers and Calvin Ridley. He’s an even better pick in managed leagues, where downside and dead lineup spots matter even less outside of the first few rounds.