So far, the reviews are mixed on Jacksonville Jaguars top draft pick Travis Hunter. It was thought that the wide receiver and cornerback could be a superstar on both sides of the ball, but neither has happened so far.
Hunter hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t been trade-up-three-spots-at-the-top-of-the-draft good. He hasn’t played a ton on defense and he hasn’t had a good receiving game until this past week when he caught eight balls for 101 yards and a touchdown in a loss to the Rams.
The Jaguars have a bye this week and head coach Liam Coen was asked if he plans on addressing Hunter’s usage.
“Yeah, I think that is absolutely going to be a part of the conversation this evening with both sides of the football,” Coen said. “I thought that there were some definite flashes yesterday in terms of on offense specifically, had a great pass breakup as well on defense.”
Travis Hunter now has a solid sample size in the NFL
Hunter is unique, so the Jaguars coaches have been careful how they’ve handled him. How much should he play on offense? How much on defense? There was a feeling-out process for how he would adapt at the NFL level.
“And we are going to play the best 11 as much as humanly possible after this bye,” Coen. “We’ve kind of gotten a sample size, as you mentioned, a sample size of everything, the totality of the first seven weeks of every position, but specifically with him.”
It seems like he’d be better off focusing on offense since Hunter has the “best” quarterback rating of any Jaguars cornerback.
“There was definitely some really good things the other night, specifically on the offensive side of the ball. There’s still a lot of things that need to be cleaned up and corrected,” Coen said.
One NFL insider thinks that Travis Hunter should just be a wide receiver
Count Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk amongst those that think Hunter should just focus on one side of the ball. And, he has a point, you don’t go get a guy like Hunter if he’s just mediocre on both sides of the ball. You could use two fourth-round picks to get that and it would cost less.
“Through six games, Hunter has participated in 63 percent of the offensive snaps and 39 percent of the defensive snaps,” Florio wrote. “That’s basically the same as playing 100 percent of the snaps on one side of the ball and making a cameo appearance on the other.
“So why not just do that? Ideally, he’d be primarily a receiver and a limited-time defensive back. But even if it goes the other way, where he’s a full-time cornerback with spot duty at receiver, it would be far better for him to reach his full potential at one position than to be a guy who doesn’t make a high-level impact at either.”
It sounds like Coen might be coming around on that theory. The Jags offense could really use help and he’s probably best suited to doing that right now.
“And then we’ve got to just make sure we’re playing the best guys at all times and see what that looks like,” Coen said. “So that will a hundred percent be a part of this evaluation and conversation over the next few days here.”
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