Ben Moa is like most doting sports dads: He believes in his son’s abilities and knows the sky is the limit. He also thinks that if all goes according to plan, Salesi Moa can — perhaps someday soon — bloom into one of the most impressive players in college football.
The 6-foot-1, 185-pound top-40 recruit from Ogden, Utah, committed to play at Tennessee this summer, choosing the Volunteers over his dad’s alma mater, Utah, as well as other finalists Michigan, Michigan State and Washington.
When Salesi, currently in the middle of his senior season at Fremont High, enrolls at Tennessee this December and slips on the orange and white, he’ll be in both offensive and defensive packages. He’ll be in both offensive and defensive meetings. He’ll be an offensive and defensive player for one of the top programs in the best conference in college football.
Ben Moa joked that, throughout the recruiting process and even after his son’s commitment, Volunteers assistant coaches on both sides of the ball have debated about who would get the most out of Salesi.
Most two-way players in college football have traditionally gone from full-time defense to sporadic player-specific packages on offense. Charles Woodson starred at Michigan as a cornerback and won the Heisman Trophy in 1997 with a fairly limited offensive role. Former Georgia corner Champ Bailey expanded the scope of the two-way player, logging 1,070 total snaps (607 on defense, 343 on offense and 120 on special teams) in 1998. But it wasn’t until the past two years that someone altered the perception of an individual limit for one player.
Salesi is expected to arrive in Knoxville as a primary receiver and be involved in specific defensive looks as a deep-lying safety. And coaches on the same staff engaging in a playful game of tug-of-war banter over such a hyped recruit not even on campus yet is, in essence, the legacy of Travis Hunter.
“Travis showed coaches how to use their best players,” said Moa, who played at tight end for Urban Meyer during his Utes tenure. “Your dude is your dude if he can play in all phases.”
That impact left by the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner who, in his two years at Colorado, played full-time wide receiver and cornerback under coach Deion Sanders, challenged the way coaches think about deploying the most-talented players on their rosters on a weekly basis. (While at Jackson State in 2022, Hunter did play both ways, but his snap count was 476-81 in nine games in favor of defense, per TruMedia.) Hunter was the No. 2 pick in this year’s NFL draft and is playing both ways for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“Obviously there are some kids that are just built for it, that can kind of go, go, go. They can run hot longer than most people,” said Vanderbilt offensive coordinator Tim Beck, who has starting junior cornerback Martel Hight starring in an offensive role at receiver during the No. 20 Commodores’ 3-0 start. “I do think what Travis did really opened some eyes for college coaches and the way they look at things. I do believe that.”
So much so that this summer, Vanderbilt senior offensive adviser Jerry Kill scrambled to find a phone number for Sanders and cold-called the NFL Hall of Famer to get tips on how they managed Hunter’s workload. Beck said Sanders was gracious with his time to talk to Kill about the experience of coaching Hunter.
Hight, a 6-foot, 180-pound corner, had four receptions for 33 yards in the 31-7 win at South Carolina last week. The genesis of the idea wasn’t complex: Beck said Hight offered to run some routes with the receivers and afterward asked head coach Clark Lea for permission to try it out.
The message from Lea was the same one that’s permeating incrementally throughout the country in 2025: If you can do it and you handle it, let’s try it.
And some schools are trying it.
Through No. 16 Utah’s 3-0 start, the program has its two best defensive players, junior cornerback Smith Snowden and senior linebacker Lander Barton, playing both ways. Snowden already has a rushing touchdown on the year, while Barton has hauled in one receiving touchdown. The Utes are also deploying their breakout star so far this year, sophomore defensive back Jackson Bennee, in some packages. The speedy Bennee has two interceptions on defense and figures to get more involved in the offense in the coming weeks.
“If you have a guy who can help you win,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said at Big 12 Media Days this summer, “you find a way to get him on the field as much as possible.”
It is easier said than done.
Minnesota sophomore defensive back Koi Perich is a triple threat for the Gophers, starring as a starting safety, wide receiver and return man. Head coach PJ Fleck said Hunter’s historic year in college football in 2024 brought eyeballs to the possibility that players can be effective playing on both sides of the ball.
But Fleck made a point that only certain players can handle the physical and mental load of preparing for so much on a game-to-game basis. Perich’s stellar freshman year at Minnesota, which featured five interceptions and dynamic returns on special teams, gave Fleck and his staff reason to believe the safety was up to the task.
“There were two-way players before Travis, but he was one of the best ever at it and got the most attention rightfully deserved, because there’s not many people who could do what he did,” Fleck said. “We’re using Koi in a way that helps us, not in a way to replicate another player from another school. I’ve never done this in my 13 years as a head coach. It just so happens this is the first player who could handle that load. That doesn’t mean we won’t keep looking at this in the future.”
To embrace it in the future, though, coaches must understand it will be nearly impossible to replicate the past.
According to TruMedia, Hunter played 2,513 snaps in two seasons at Colorado. In 2024, he played in 368 more snaps in three less games than the next-closest player in the FBS, Texas offensive lineman Hayden Conner, who played in 16 games. Injuries kept Hunter from playing in all of Colorado’s games in 2023, but he still led the sport in snaps with 1,029, despite playing in just nine games.
Of the more pronounced two-way players so far in 2025, Hight is the only defensive starter with more snaps on offense (120 total: 61 offensive, 59 defensive) at the moment. Part of that is due to Vanderbilt’s stellar start and more offensive possessions for the Commodores in the first month of the year. Snowden has played 135 snaps so far (87 defensive, 48 offensive). No one is on track to challenge Hunter’s snaps played this year.
“When it’s Travis Hunter, and he’s clearly the best player on the team, and clearly one of the best players in the country, then I think it’s worth it, and it’s obvious to everybody,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “The problem is everybody sees Travis Hunter, and then, they all think that they’re Travis Hunter and they’re not.”
Hunter wasn’t the first two-way star in college football, but he was the most effective in the sport’s modern history. Former household names such as Bailey and Woodson occasionally wowed fans on both sides of the ball in the ’90s, but no player stayed on the field as much, and was as impactful, as Hunter.
Only a season removed from Hunter routinely striking a prescient Heisman pose after interceptions and touchdown catches, the impact could be felt in the coming seasons as the lifeblood of every program — the recruiting department — will be faced with questions from potential recruits who say they have what it takes to play both ways.
That’s due to the fact that most star recruits play both ways in high school to begin with but rarely are on the field for every snap of the game. Linebackers double as running backs or tight ends. Defensive backs as receivers. Defensive linemen on the opposite side of the trench. Perich sold his coaches on his ability because, as Fleck said, he was one of the rare players who never stepped off the field.
Fleck said during the recruiting process Perich, formerly the top recruit in the state of Minnesota, was the one who brought up the topic. Defensive players are bringing up that they once were offensive stars in high school. A Vanderbilt defensive end was walking into the facility with Beck earlier this month and said he’s ready to be part of goal-line packages as a tight end. The same conversations are popping up at Minnesota.
“Everyone on my roster thinks they’re a two-way player now,” Fleck said.
Franklin said recruits used to bring up the idea of playing both ways in passing, but Hunter changed the calculus.
“Now you have more guys who think they can do it, and want to do it,” Franklin said. “The other thing is now they’ve heard forever that quarterbacks and a few other positions get drafted high, now the whole conversation with Travis, he’s more valuable than just a wideout, and he’s more valuable than just a DB, so that makes him even a higher draft choice because he’s able to impact both sides of the ball. I think that registers with kids.”
Duke coach Manny Diaz is realistic about what he saw with Hunter and how difficult it will be to replicate, even on a less influential level.
“It has been a thing that we have mentioned to people (in recruiting), but the ability to get good enough at one thing, to be good enough to play at one position, let alone two, is tough; it’s tricky,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll see a huge piece of that going forward.”
There are those ready to attempt to carry the torch left behind by Hunter.
Never one to slow himself down, Salesi Moa has his dad already thinking what’s around the corner. When Fremont faced Utah prep powerhouse Corner Canyon two weeks ago, Salesi had a game-high 12 tackles on defense and seven catches for 129 yards on offense. Ben, the school’s defensive coordinator, noticed Salesi feeling it, so he’s already mapping out days to allow his body to rest.
“Now it’s my job to ensure he’s not taking too many hits in practice. Now I’m not preparing him to just freaking win games, now I’m preparing him for Tennessee,” Moa said. “I need to give them the product that they’re paying for. Now I have to take care of him. I can’t run the Ferrari into the ground.”