Super Bowl champ Anquan Boldin spills NFL playbook secrets to Travis Hunter before ex-CU star’s big switch

Colorado Buffaloes two-way star Travis Hunter is headed to the NFL. After a stellar 2024 college season, during which he won the Heisman Trophy, he is entering the 2025 NFL draft. He is projected to be a top five pick and is in contention to be the first pick by the Tennessee Titans.

Hunter has been doing everything to prepare for the NFL, including getting advice from current and former players. On Friday, Hunter had former NFL wide receiver Anquan Boldin on "The Travis Hunter Show." Boldin won the Super Bowl in 2012 with the Baltimore Ravens.

One of the biggest challenges for new players is memorizing a huge NFL playbook. So, when Hunter had Boldin on his show, he asked him the secrets of how to learn one.

"The thing that helped me out the most was, I don't know if you know, but I played QB in high school," Boldin said. (12:50) "Then, at Florida State, I played both QB and receiver. So, the way that I learned plays wasn't just, you know, most guys they play receiver, they just learn X, Y, or Z. For me, being a QB, I had to learn concepts as opposed to learning a position.

So once you learn concepts it makes learning a position easy. So, I'll take you for example right, when I came to Arizona, they told me to learn three different positions because depending on what the position was, what the personnel was, I can be something different on each play. So, if we go base, I can be Z. If we go three wide, I can be X or Y."

Anquan Boldin tells Travis Hunter to focus on his portion of the play

Anquan Boldin also told Travis Hunter that some young guys focus too much on learning where everyone will be on every play. He advised him to concentrate on learning his part of the play for a baseline understanding of what to do.

"Sometimes you have young guys, they get caught in trying to hear the whole play right way," Boldin said. (14:55) "When you have someone call a formation and they trying to listen to the whole play, they lose where they're supposed to line up at. That's why a lot of times you see young guys are the last ones out of the huddle."

If Hunter wants to play both WR and CB, he must be prepared to memorize a huge playbook.