Tim Benz: Travis Hunter's '2-way player' opinion makes sense but misses bigger picture

Maybe we finally found something Travis Hunter can’t do: talk baseball.

The college football star recently won the Heisman Trophy as a two-way player. He excelled as a cornerback and wide receiver at Colorado.

Now he is about to become a first-round draft choice, and many are wondering if he can do the same thing as a two-way player at the professional level.

At the NFL Scouting Combine, Hunter was asked if what he did was “more difficult” than what Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani does as a pitcher and hitter in Major League Baseball.

“Probably me, what I do in football, because it’s a lot on your body,” Hunter said. “Ohtani, he is a great player. But you’ve got to do a lot in football.”

Travis Hunter says him playing both sides in football is more difficult than Shohei Ohtani hitting and pitching in baseball

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In one sense, I agree with Hunter. The physical demands of playing the majority of a football game at wide receiver and cornerback (17 times a year) are more difficult than getting four or five at-bats and pitching six innings or so once every five days.

Yes, even counting the other days that Ohtani suits up as strictly a designated hitter.

From the standpoint of physical taxation and bodily exhaustion, indeed, Hunter is right.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the question. The question was, “What is more difficult?”

Without a doubt, the answer is Ohtani’s version of a two-way player, or what Pirates phenom Paul Skenes did as a pitcher and catcher when he started his college career at Air Force.

Especially when you consider the accomplishments with which those guys handled both tasks.

The skill sets to become a MLB-level hitter and starting pitcher are vastly different. You have a one-in-a-million chance of sharpening your swing, stance, hip rotation, eye discipline, strength, timing, plate coverage, pitch recognition and follow-through to ever be good enough to even make it to that level — let alone excel to the degree Ohtani did last season, hitting 54 home runs while batting .310.

Similarly, Ohtani has honed his pitching mechanics, leg drive, arm slot, velocity, grip technique and pitch repertoire to where he has 38 major league wins, 608 strikeouts and a 3.01 career ERA.

Pitching and hitting are vastly different disciplines. They have very little to do with each other. Being good at one doesn’t mean that you are going to be remotely good at the other — especially at the upper levels of the sport.

It’s like a point-per-game hockey forward who could hop into an NHL net and post a .915 save percentage as a goalie 25 or 30 nights a year.

Or, if Hunter wants a football comp, it’s like a starting quarterback who also excels at linebacker or edge rusher. James Conner jumping over to the defensive line as a running back at Pitt would come closer to falling under that umbrella. But I’d be reaching for many other examples.

For defensive backs and wide receivers, though, if you are fast and shifty enough to get open on an NFL route, you might be fast and shifty enough to cover an NFL route. If your hands are good enough as a receiver, they are certainly going to be good enough as a corner. If you are tough and strong enough to tackle on the corner, you are going to be tough and strong enough to at least be a representative blocker as a receiver.

The skills and talents are transferable across the line of scrimmage — as we saw (to varying degrees) with Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson, Champ Bailey, Julian Edelman, Troy Brown and Charles Woodson over the years. Frankly, athletically speaking, I’m sure there are plenty more players in the NFL who could play both corner and receiver, but they are too valuable at one position or the other to risk.

Hunter is probably going to be one of those guys. He’s gifted enough, though, that he might be so good on both sides of the ball that whatever team drafts him can’t see a way to keep him on the sidelines.

That would be impressive.

Not Ohtani-level, but impressive nonetheless.