There’s a reason that Paul Brown is called “The Father of Modern Football.”

Everything in today’s game can be traced somehow, some way, to one of the many innovations of the iconic former Browns head coach. In fact, he was so far ahead of the curve — and so far ahead of his time — that he lapped the field.

With that, then, I would love to hear what he would have said about Colorado product Travis Hunter, the most intriguing player — by far; it isn’t even close — in the upcoming NFL Draft.

Hunter started for the Buffaloes at both wide receiver and cornerback and would like to do the same in the pros. But the NFL people, their heads always stuck in the sand, resisting change with every ounce of strength they have, decided he was a wide receiver and are looking at him — projecting him —as such.

What? Why can’t he go both offense and defense?

“Well,” the NFL stick-in-the-muds will say, “because we’ve always done it that way.” 

Not since 1960 — 65 years ago — has a player started at two positions. He was Pro Football Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik, who manned center and middle linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL Championship Game that year when they stopped fullback Jim Taylor eight yards short of the goal line on the final play to preserve a 17-13 victory over second-year head coach Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers.

The man who introduced single-platoon football to the NFL was none other Brown. But now that every team has been entrenched in that concept for so long, I would bet a dollar to a doughnut that he would take Hunter, and let him play both ways, so as to do something that no one else was doing in an attempt to get an edge, an advantage.

That’s how visionaries operate, and there’s never been anyone in football even close to Paul Brown.

Steve King