Joel Klatt: Colorado's plan for Travis Hunter has to change

Joel Klatt voiced his opinion on Colorado’s usage of two-way star Travis Hunter on the latest episode of The Joel Klatt Show.

Hunter had an incredible showing against North Dakota State in Week 1, catching 7 passes for 132 yards and three touchdowns, while playing defense as well, amassing 136 total snaps on the evening. That’s not something Klatt believes can happen moving forward for the Buffaloes. He believes they need to strike a delicate balance.

CLICK HERE to go to PrizePicks and use code ON3 to receive a guaranteed $50 once you play $5 in lineups!

“Travis Hunter playing both ways. I know we all love to see it. We love to see it, and I’m not suggesting that they don’t play him both ways, but the plan for Travis Hunter has to change. It has to change,” Klatt explained. “He played basically every snap on defense and missed only two snaps on offense. So, he played — and he played seven on special teams. So, guess how many snaps he got? 136. 136! If he plays 136 out of 180, I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s 136. That’s what it is.’ But when it’s 136 out of 140, that’s too much, because that suggests that he was wasting effort.

“Listen, a game is kind of like a bell curve. There are snaps that become meaningless. Then, there are — the bulk of the snaps are kind of like in the middle, and then there’s these snaps on the other side, and there’s just a few that mean everything. What you have to do is you have to shove his snap total into the back half of the bell curve. You’ve got to get him off the field for this 10-12% of the snaps that don’t matter. That has to be part of the game plan. First downs, base defense on, you know, your opponent’s side of the territory. All these different things that you can do.”

Watch College Football Games Live -Try for Free Fubo! Click HERE NOW

Continuing, Klatt offered a strategy for keeping Hunter fresh throughout a game: “By the way, here’s another little one, build an offensive game plan so that he’s always the wide receiver nearest your bench. Build a defensive game plan that he’s always the corner nearest your bench. Maybe not always, but maybe there is a certain call, or in certain parts of the field, where you can put him there so that he can slide in and out and take five or six snaps off and it doesn’t hurt you. Based on field position, time of game, game situation, all these different things.

“I make the contention that you need to take 10-15% of Travis Hunter’s snaps away from him, and you can do that, so that in those moments that you need him to be the elite player that he is, he can play at his peak potential. Right now, when you redline like that the entire year, he will break down. And if he breaks down after what I saw on Thursday night, they don’t have anything else. So, it’s incumbent on the coaching staff to build a game plan that allows him to be sustainable. This word of sustainable — what happened Thursday night was not sustainable at all.

*Follow all Colorado Buffaloes news on Facebook here*

“You can’t expect Shedeur [Sanders] And Travis to do that every single week and bail everybody else out. The game plan has to be better from the coaching staff, the play from those teammates have got to get better.”

At times, Travis Hunter can look like the most special player in all of college football. Joel Klatt just wants to ensure that lasts throughout an entire season. It’s easy to see why he has concerns, but the truly fascinating part will be whether Colorado finds a way to balance the young man’s talent in 2024.