| Score | Overall |
| 93.1 | 1 |
| Position | Day |
| 1 | 1 |
| Score | Position | Day | Overall |
| 93.1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Height: | 6' | Weight: | 188 lbs |
| Hands: | 9.125 | Arms: | 31.375 |
| 40 YD Dash: | DNP | 10 YD Split: | DNP |
| Vertical: | DNP | Broad: | DNP |
| Shuttle: | -- | Cone: | DNP |
| Height: | 6' | Hands: | 9.125 | 40 YD Dash: | DNP |
| Weight: | 188 lbs | Arms: | 31.375 | 10 YD Split: | DNP |
| Broad: | DNP | Cone: | DNP | ||
| Vertical: | DNP | Shuttle: | -- |
| Height: | 6' | Hands: | 9.125 | 40 YD Dash: | DNP | Broad: | DNP | Cone: | DNP |
| Weight: | 188 lbs | Arms: | 31.375 | 10 YD Split: | DNP | Vertical: | DNP | Shuttle: | -- |
Heisman Trophy winner (2024)
Walter Camp Award winner (2024)
Bednarik Award winner (2024)
Lott IMPACT Trophy winner (2024)
Paul Hornung Award winner (2023, 2024)
Academic All-American of the Year (2024)
Academic All-American (2023, 2024)
Unanimous All-American First Team (2024)
Former No. 1 overall recruit
Freaky athlete with explosiveness and change of direction ability. Hunter is the complete package athletically. His body control is uncanny. His defensive tape is littered with jaw-dropping plays that elicit a "he did what?!" response. We didn’t get official testing on him at the Combine or his pro day, but we do have juicy GPS data to fall back on. You even have to wonder: if he wasn’t playing both sides of the ball (110+ snaps a game), would he have even more in the tank athletically?
Generational ball skills and instincts. Hunter has arguably the best ball skills I have ever seen from a prospect. From the way he reads the QB, tracks the ball in the air, to the way he came from a different zip code to attack the ball in the air – I have never seen anything like it. He is scrappy and plays above the rim with ease.
Coverage eraser. Hunter has the tools to perform in man, match, and off-mirror coverages. He can come up, press, and get physical at the line of scrimmage. Some of his interactions in press are hilarious — he almost instigates fights with his scrappy, pestering press technique that is more disruptive than powerful. What he should do in the NFL is paradoxical. On one hand, he has the athletic traits, transition speed, and length to shut down WR1s in man, but his best attribute is his instincts and ball skills. His football IQ, processing, and route recognition are also elite, so you almost prefer that he is in a read-and-react zone deployment, allowing him to have more opportunities to force turnovers. Either way, he is an absolute coverage weapon.
Two-way potential. Travis Hunter might be the first player in NFL history to play both sides of the ball in a near full-time capacity. As a WR, all of the physical traits he possesses are on display: the body control, ball skills, change of direction, and explosiveness. With some coaching, he should become a high-level separatist. He has the potential to be a top-10 WR in the NFL if a team chooses that path for him.
Technical refinement is a work in progress. I am sure you can imagine, but if you had to perform two jobs but were never able to train at either of them fully, some technical refinement might be lacking. This is true with Hunter both at CB and WR. At CB, he can get a little loosey goosey with his footwork and will occasionally get caught in a false step. Elic Ayomanor was able to beat him with crisp releases. At WR, the route running is comically improvised. He is drifty; his depths aren’t always clean. Everything worked for him because he is that gifted. I almost see this as a positive, as NFL coaching should be able to clean up what's missing relatively easily, and then… well, you have a top-5 player in the game with Hall of Fame potential.
Not an overly physical player with iffy play strength. This is most notable as a run defender, where you see him both make some business decisions and struggle to tackle bigger WRs, RBs, and TEs in space. Not to excuse everything with "he played both ways," but there is a legit question about whether or not exhaustion impacted his tackling ability.
Hunter is my #1 player in the Draft, based *solely *on his profile at CB without factoring in any impact on offense. As a WR alone, he would score somewhere around 17th to 20th. Combine the two, and it's hard not to use the term generational when describing him. Hunter is the real deal and should come off the board in the first three picks of the Draft.
| Score | Overall |
| 91.3 | 5 |
| Position | Day |
| 2 | 1 |
| Score | Position | Day | Overall |
| 91.3 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Height: | 5' 10" | Weight: | 194 lbs |
| Hands: | 9.5 | Arms: | 29.625 |
| 40 YD Dash: | 4.39 | 10 YD Split: | 1.5 |
| Vertical: | 35 | Broad: | 123 |
| Shuttle: | -- | Cone: | DNP |
| Height: | 5' 10" | Hands: | 9.5 | 40 YD Dash: | 4.39 |
| Weight: | 194 lbs | Arms: | 29.625 | 10 YD Split: | 1.5 |
| Broad: | 123 | Cone: | DNP | ||
| Vertical: | 35 | Shuttle: | -- |
| Height: | 5' 10" | Hands: | 9.5 | 40 YD Dash: | 4.39 | Broad: | 123 | Cone: | DNP |
| Weight: | 194 lbs | Arms: | 29.625 | 10 YD Split: | 1.5 | Vertical: | 35 | Shuttle: | -- |
All-American First Team (2024)
All-SEC First Team (2024)
Jim Thorpe Award winner (2024)
Bronko Nagurski Trophy finalist (2024)
All-Big 12 Second Team (2023)
Jim Thorpe Award semifinalist (2023)
All-Big 12 Honorable Mention (2022)
Academic All-Big 12 First Team (2021)
Led the SEC and third in FBS in interceptions (5)
Juicy athletic profile. Barron is explosive and quick. The hallmark of his game is lateral quickness and change-of-direction ability.
Elite ball production. He has a high-level football IQ and thrives with his zone coverage ability. He reads out concepts fast and has excellent reaction quickness. By my count, he racked up a class-leading 25 forced incompletions in 2024.
Man coverage ability with press competence. Barron has the transition quickness to play all types of man/match coverage from any leverage. He is sticky in press and gets into phase with ease. When in man, he excels at locating the ball in the air and separating the ball from the intended WR.
Willing to defend the run. Barron will come up and tackle. He isn’t quite the human missile Devon Witherspoon was, but there are a ton of overlaps in the way they play the game.
Playmaker in all phases. On top of all the aforementioned ball production, he has multiple defensive touchdowns and special-teams touchdowns. If he is on the field, he is making plays.
Underwhelming size. Barron is under 5’11" and weighs in at just 190 pounds. This isn’t a small corner profile, but typically, true CB1s in the league are much larger and can handle bigger body WR matchups physically. Thankfully, Barron is much longer than most 5’11” CBs.
Play strength is average. His size is certainly a factor here, but tasks that require some extra oomph and strength give him trouble. When defending the run, he can get completely washed by bigger blockers. You see the same problem defending screens at times. In coverage, bigger WRs can give him trouble down the field. It's not a consistent problem, but rather something that occasionally appears.
Barron is a black hole in coverage. In fact, he didn’t give up a single TD in 2024. He is excellent in press-man or off-zone. He has an incredibly impressive reel of plays on the ball. If you created a spectrum of players between DJ Reed and Devon Witherspoon, Barron is on it. In most classes, he would be the clear-cut CB1 of the class, but unfortunately for him, he has to contend with a mutant in Travis Hunter. Officially, he scores as a top-10 player for me.
| Score | Overall |
| 89.3 | 17 |
| Position | Day |
| 3 | 1 |
| Score | Position | Day | Overall |
| 89.3 | 3 | 1 | 17 |
| Height: | 6' 1" | Weight: | 194 lbs |
| Hands: | 9.125 | Arms: | 30.125 |
| 40 YD Dash: | DNP | 10 YD Split: | DNP |
| Vertical: | DNP | Broad: | DNP |
| Shuttle: | -- | Cone: | DNP |
| Height: | 6' 1" | Hands: | 9.125 | 40 YD Dash: | DNP |
| Weight: | 194 lbs | Arms: | 30.125 | 10 YD Split: | DNP |
| Broad: | DNP | Cone: | DNP | ||
| Vertical: | DNP | Shuttle: | -- |
| Height: | 6' 1" | Hands: | 9.125 | 40 YD Dash: | DNP | Broad: | DNP | Cone: | DNP |
| Weight: | 194 lbs | Arms: | 30.125 | 10 YD Split: | DNP | Vertical: | DNP | Shuttle: | -- |
All-American Second Team (2024)
All-American First Team (2023)
All-Big Ten Second Team (2024)
All-Big Ten First Team (2023)
Jim Thorpe Award semifinalist (2024)
Defensive MVP of 2023 National Championship Game
Co-Defensive Freshman of the Year (2022)
Freshman All-American (2022)
Former 5-star recruit
Prototype CB1 size, athleticism, and length. Johnson has the girth, strength, and quickness to match up with any type of WR and thrive.
Read and react ability. Johnson is best served in off-coverages where he can use his quick processing skills to read route concepts underneath him and explode on the ball. His click and drive is special. Downfield, he can track and the body control to separate the WR from the ball.
Press-man physicality. Johnson can be extremely physical at the line of scrimmage. He disrupts route timing with relative ease and doesn’t give up leverage. His transition speed is good, and he gets into phase with good timing once contact is broken.
Big-time injury concerns. Johnson has dealt with knee, foot/toe, and shoulder injuries in his three years of college football. Injuries have essentially wiped out his entire pre-draft process and stolen half of his 2024 season as well.
Top-end speed is questionable. You didn’t see Johnson get beat a ton, but when you did, it was typically on deep routes where he had to open up completely, and a lot of those were double moves. Furthermore, you see him lose composure at times when his back is to the ball. These are all signs he doesn’t trust his long speed — players tend to know their weaknesses better than anyone else.
Business-decision maker. Johnson looked a bit checked out in 2024 in general, but it was most noticeable defending the run or in the tackling phases in space. I saw poor effort on tape and an unwillingness to stick his face in the fire and get his hands dirty.
Johnson’s 2023 tape, in Michigan’s run to a national championship, is arguably the best tape of any player in this draft class. He has some of the best playmaking ability I have seen from a CB. Unfortunately, 2024 wasn’t quite as good, and Johnson is dealing with major injury concerns. His pre-draft process couldn’t have gone worse for him, as he was once considered a slam-dunk top-5 pick in the draft. With the caveat that I don’t have access to Johnson’s medical files, I am willing to buy in completely. In a typical class and with a smooth off-season, he would be a top-10 lock, but this class is uber-rich in CB talent at the top. Officially, he ranks as a top-20 player in the class for me.
More Evaluations Coming Soon
The Fantasy Points Prospect Guide will be regularly updated as Brett Whitefield makes his way through more film.
Check back regularly for updates on both offensive and defensive players.
