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Travis Kelce says what others won't when it comes to polarizing rookie the Chiefs will have to play in 2025

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Justin Churchill | Last updated Jul 7, 2025 4:54 PM ET

Every single year, there is a storyline with an NFL rookie that seems to have some sort of drama attached to it, whether that drama is good or bad. This year, there are a ton, thankfully none of the bad ones belong to the Kansas City Chiefs rookies.

But, it's very clear that the narratives and attention, most of it, anyway, have been centered around the second overall pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Travis Hunter, who is expected to be a two-way player, meaning he will be a full-time player on both offense and defense.

And, he has dominated headlines and attention, even more so than No. 1 pick Cam Ward, who is the quarterback for the Tennessee Titans now. Most of that is because of the full-time two-way player thing, which has never really been done in the NFL. Sure, guys have played snaps here and there on both sides, but never full-time like he did in college at Colorado.

And, some people think he will be very successful doing that in the NFL. Others think he can be, but won't be right away, and then there are some who think he won't be very good doing that at all.

A lot of it comes down to fatigue, where the NFL game is much faster and physical than the college game. That seems to be where Travis Kelce, one of the greatest players of all time, thinks Hunter will struggle.

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"Both sides? That's the thing, I don't know how they're going to divvy it out," Kelce said on Bussin with the Boys. "I don't know, because teams are going to be going after him. They're gonna try to make his day miserable. If he plays corner, they're gonna run deep balls at him all day. They're gonna run the wide receivers, just take off on him all day, just to try to get him tired. Why wouldn't you just attack him that way?"

And that may be what the Chiefs end up doing. If so, guys like Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown, and others are going to be the ones given that chance to wear him down by running deep routes. And, Hunter is fast, but he certainly isn't faster than either of those guys, so that wouldn't be a bad idea if the Chiefs did decide to go that route when they play the Jaguars on Monday Night Football.

The Chiefs did not run that many deep balls last year, and their deep ball game hasn't been great in a few years. But, that's not to say they can't run them against Hunter just as a game plan to wear him out.

It will be interesting to see how the Chiefs game plan for him is on both sides of the ball.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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