The Jacksonville Jaguars have had a plan for Travis Hunter since they made the major draft-day move to go up and take him at No. 2 overall in the 2025 NFL Draft. It’s led to plenty of speculation and anticipation from fans and media alike. Will he play offense? Defense? Both? Will he be a true two-way player?
It’s fun for everyone to guess, but Jaguars head coach Liam Coen and general manager James Gladstone are the only ones that truly know for sure. And, due to Hunter’s heavy offensive workload in recent OTAs and mandatory minicamp, most observers assumed that he’d be a wide receiver first.
But, speaking to Andrew Siciliano and Max Starks of SiriusXM NFL Radio, Gladstone said that those assumptions aren’t necessarily true.
“I do think there’s a little bit of a misconception in that it’s wide receiver first, corner second as much as it is the learning methodology of wide receiver through this phase, and then continuing to trickle in more defense, since that is his primary background,” Gladstone said.
Gladstone said that these offseason workouts are a good place to try some new things and focus on different aspects of Hunter’s maturation.
“The windows for development in the NFL, they are few and far between, right? The offseason program is where it exists in its healthiest state,” Gladstone continued.
Gladstone thinks Hunter is more comfortable on defense right now
So, given that these offseason practices are a good place to do some tinkering, Gladstone says they’ve wanted to feed Hunter what he can handle, while not putting too much stress on his lean frame.
“And I think you want to put him in a position to be successful and not put too much on his body,” Gladstone said. “Like you said, he is a lean guy; he will get stronger over time. I think that is the highest and best use of his time, to get familiar with the defensive side and give him impactful plays on the offensive side, and not give him the full playbook.”
It sounds like Hunter wasn’t getting a ton of defensive reps in practices because he already knows that side of the ball better and there aren’t as many wrinkles at cornerback as there are at wide receiver.
“Our understanding that Travis is most naturally comfortable, most naturally in tune on the defensive side of the ball,” Gladstone continued. “We wanted to load him offensively throughout this window to ensure that by the time we got to training camp, we had a runway built up on that side because there’s so much more nuance, so much more adjustments in real time on the offensive side of the ball that would require a lot more learning.”
Hunter’s heavy usage on offense could be misleading
Hunter has taken the majority of his reps so far at wide receiver obviously. Naturally, that led many to assume that this would be his primary role and then – naturally – led to analysts to speculate and criticize.
Former NFL general manager Mike Tannenbaum said a couple of weeks ago that he thought the Jags were doing it wrong.
“I would do the complete opposite,” Tannenbaum said on NFL Live. “I would play him at corner, get him comfortable there, and after that give him a very small package on offense, 10-15 plays, third down, red zone. And I think that would put him in the best position to be successful. I think he is in the impact corner from day one, put him outside man to man, he can play either side because he is so explosive as well.”
Well, after hearing about Gladstone’s approach to Hunter, maybe there is a reason that Tannenbaum has “former” in front of the G.M. title. And it sounds like the Jaguars have incredibly sound reasoning for going offense first with Hunter in practice. It will be very interesting to see what they do with him in training camp (assuming he’s signed by then).
“So with this phase of the process sort of being rooted through that lens, that’s why we wanted to put the emphasis on ‘o’ knowing that we would then trickle in the defensive participation a little bit more towards the back end of the off-season program and really as we get into training camp,” Gladstone said.
There will be a lot of popcorn popped in anticipation.
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