The Jacksonville Jaguars finally addressed the question that has been hanging over their building since they traded up for Travis Hunter. He is going to play both ways, but the team has not committed to how much.
Head coach Liam Coen and general manager James Gladstone met with reporters at OTAs and confirmed Hunter will see real reps at both cornerback and wide receiver. They also confirmed they have not decided which side will get his primary defensive snap counts.
This is the conversation every NFL coach has been avoiding since the Heisman trophy got handed to Hunter. The college version of him played 100-plus snaps a game on both sides of the ball. The NFL is different. The hits are harder. The fatigue is real. The injury risk on a player taking 1,200 snaps a season is well documented.
Coen’s solution so far has been the right one. Hunter has spent OTAs rotating. Two periods at corner, two at receiver, water break, repeat. The team is building a workload map for what he can handle in pads and what he cannot.
Privately, multiple league sources have said the Jaguars view Hunter as a cornerback first. That has been the read from the moment Jacksonville moved up in the draft. The receiver upside is what made him a top-three pick. The defensive value is what made him worth the price.
The numbers back that read. Hunter ran a 4.39 at the combine. He has elite recovery speed. He plays the ball at the catch point as well as any rookie defender in years. The Jaguars defense had the worst pass coverage grades in the league last season. Putting Hunter on the field at corner for 60 snaps a game changes that immediately.
The wide receiver side is where the conversation gets harder. The Jaguars already have Brian Thomas Jr. coming off a 1,300-yard season. They have Christian Kirk in a contract year. Hunter on offense is a luxury. Hunter on defense is a need.
Coen has been careful not to box himself in. He said Hunter will be the lead option in certain offensive packages and not in others. He said the receiver reps are not going to be cosmetic.
The honest version is this. Hunter is going to play 50-plus snaps a game at corner. He is going to play 15-20 a game at receiver. Those snap counts will move based on game situation and matchup. Some weeks the offensive number goes up. Some weeks it goes down to almost nothing.
Fans hoping for the college version are going to be disappointed. The NFL version of Travis Hunter is going to be a cornerback who occasionally lines up at receiver. That is the only sustainable model for what he does, and the Jaguars seem to know it even if they are not saying it out loud.
The real test is October. If Hunter is still on the field on both sides of the ball by Week 8, the experiment is working. If he is not, this becomes a corner conversation only, and Jacksonville lives with that.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
