LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — One of the top Swiss-army-knife talents in the 2025 college football recruiting class can be found in the Las Vegas Valley.
6-foot-4 jack-of-all-trades JJ Buchanan, considered positionally as an athlete, has been used all over the field and in all three phases of the game at Coronado High School in Henderson.
"I'm playing safety, receiver, I'm coming in at running back, I'm playing linebacker a bit," Buchanan told me. "I did punt return and kick return, so there was limited snaps I was off the field."
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Rated as a 4-star athlete by 247Sports and ranked as the 4th-best prospect of his class in Nevada, Buchanan signed with Utah over schools like UNLV and Boise State. But the nature of his offers was unique.
"I had 15 or 16 offers and it was pretty much split between receiver, tight end, safety, and linebacker. I got offers to play at all four position," said Buchanan, who plans on beginning his career at Utah as a wideout while potentially dabbling with defense down the line.
The Henderson native racked up over 2,000 all-purpose yards between his junior and senior seasons. He finished his senior season with 60 tackles (3.0 TFL, 2 sacks), a fumble recovery, a pair of pass breakups, adding to an offensive output of 1,023 receiving yards and 11 receiving touchdowns.
The two-way player is a two-sport athlete, also starring for the Cougars basketball team. Buchanan opted to play out his senior season instead of enrolling at college early to participate in spring football.
"I always played flag football growing up, so obviously you're playing a little bit of everything," Buchanan said. "When I got to high school, that was something I was adamant to my coach about — being able to play both ways. Junior year comes around and Coach Dupris is the new head coach."
"I was immediately excited," Coronado head coach Shawn Dupris said remembering his first impressions of Buchanan in 2023. "You could obviously tell he was athletic, ran routes really well, uses his hands, hustled, all the things you look for when you try to meet kids and see what you have."
Buchanan points to Dupris as a big reason for his success, saying not many coaches would give him the necessary workload to develop as a two-way player.
"When you get an athlete as big as him, as long as him, and also the strength, it's tough," Dupris said about deploying Buchanan all across the field. "There's a lot of things you want to do as a coach, to piece him in to help as much as possible, but also not overwhelm him."
While his high school career is remembered for his versatility, Buchanan is being tasked to specialize in a position to begin his college career. He is choosing to focus on his offensive prowess as a receiver over being a safety.
"I love tackling people, I love getting interceptions, but it just came down to 'I love catching touchdowns the most' and that's what I'm best at," Buchanan explained.
The door is open for him to be a two-way player on the next level, Buchanan saying that "if I develop the way they need me to on the offensive side I could end up exploring playing both sides."
Colorado's superstar two-way player Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy in 2024 after playing both cornerback and wide receiver for the Buffaloes. A player consistently starring on both sides of the ball in college had rarely been seen before Hunter broke onto the scene.
While Buchanan doesn't enter college with the same 5-star pedigree that Hunter did and plays a different defensive position, there's a path for the Coronado star to make a similar impact at Utah.
