The Jacksonville Jaguars are preparing for life with their new toy, wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter. There has been an immense amount of speculation for months about what he’d be in the NFL. Is he going to play offense? How about defense? How about both?
So far, the Jaguars would like to feed him slowly and not throw the (play)book at him right away. As smart as he is, overloading him from the jump wouldn’t be a prudent idea. For now, they’ve started Hunter on offense, but head coach Liam Coen says they’ll start him in on defense shortly.
“Yeah, he’ll be able to get integrated next week on the defensive side of the ball,” Coen told reporters Saturday. “We just kind of ended up making a decision that from yesterday to today we wanted to be able to clean up some of the things that we may have been able to miss yesterday, get extra reps on the offensive side of the ball, and next week he’ll start to roll on defense.”
So far so good on offense
Bobby Kownack of NFL.com says Hunter has looked good on offense so far in rookie minicamp.
“As for his work on offense the past two days of Jacksonville’s rookie minicamp, Hunter impressed in what capacity he could given teams are still in Phase 2 of the offseason, which consists of on-field workouts but no live contact or drills that include team offense versus team defense,” Kownack writes.
“Hunter put in extra work after practice, and he was also asked about his commitment to repeating reps following mistakes.”
“You know, this organization expects a lot out of me,” Hunter said. “They expect me to come out and play right away, so I’m going to do whatever it takes for me to get out there and play right away.”
While Hunter has been very open about wanting to play as many snaps as possible on both sides of the ball, even learning just one position in the NFL is a Herculean task.
“You’ve just got to get used to it,” Hunter said about learning two positions in the NFL. “It’s just a lot of different types of calls, but other than that, the defense is pretty easy. You’ve just got to get used to the offense.”
Coen is confident that Hunter will figure everything out
Perhaps the fact that he’s playing opposing positions can help him learn both of them…if that makes sense.
“He’s obviously having to learn both sides of the ball,” Coen said. “He’s a football-smart guy. The game makes sense to him. And so now it’s just about putting in that time, that extra time that he’s going to have to do in order to be successful to play even one side of the ball at this level. So he knows what’s cut out for him coming up.”
It sounds like they will feed Hunter as much as he can handle. One would think the bigger issue is the wear and tear on his body. Hunter is 6’0″, 188 lbs. Not only is he not the biggest guy in the world, but it’s a 17-game season and if – in theory, given his druthers – he were to play full-time on both sides of the ball? That’s essentially a 34-game season. Rookies had enough issues adjusting to the previous 16-game season, let alone 17 games plus.
Everyone is excited to see what Hunter becomes in the NFL, but his health (mental and physical) should be the most important. Don’t run this guy into the ground.
Jaguars Rookie Will Start on One Side of the Ball at First