Jacksonville Jaguars rookie Travis Hunter plans to play both ways with the belief that he can be a premiere talent at the wideout and cornerback spots. And while he played both positions during OTAs and minicamp, doubt surrounds Hunter’s ability to do that throughout a full football season.
Former NFL offensive lineman Willie Colon, who won Super Bowl XLIII with the Pittsburgh Steelers, said Hunter’s teammates should “test” his might during practice and he doubts the former Colorado star’s path to two-way stardom.
“I know how I would approach a guy like this,” Colon said on Friday’s episode of Breakfast Ball. “I’m going to test his armor. I’m going to see how tough you really are. If you want to be a two-way player in the NFL, I’m going to see if you’re strong enough to be a two-way player. So, when I’m pulling around that corner, I’m going to test that 12 on your chest.
“And so, for me, if I’m the Jacksonville Jaguars, listen to what the players are saying. They’re curious if he can finish an 18-week season going both ways. I promise you he won’t. They’ll move him to one side of the ball and that’s cornerback, and allow him to be the best cornerback he can be. Because not only will you have to make tackles, you’re going to have to withstand getting hit, too.”
No one knows how Jacksonville will utilize Hunter this season outside of the organization. First-year Jaguars coach Liam Coen said there is a plan in place and Hunter is comfortable with the direction moving forward.
“We built a plan and then sat him down and really talked through it,” Coen said during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “How does he learn? What is the best ways that he learns? We did gain some of that information throughout the draft process, but when you actually sit down with him and get a feeling, ‘Well, he likes to walk-through more than sit in a meeting-room setting, so let’s do more walk-throughs.’ Every day he was on offense, he also met with the defensive staff in the afternoons, and vice versa.
“Typically throughout this offseason, he was on one side of ball in practice, and he didn’t flip-flop. Today, he did. And he played both sides of the ball in practice today and that will have to continue on throughout training camp where he’s playing on both sides of the ball and getting that mental and physical endurance throughout the training camp, because that’s what he’s going to have to do in games. So ultimately, we’re building a foundation right now of both sides of the football, but he’s going to have to do both in practice because that’s what the game is going to be like, and we’ll sit down and reevaluate what we did this spring to see what’s the best moving forward.”
Hunter was adamant during the pre-draft process that he wanted to play both ways in the NFL after doing so with Heisman honors at Colorado last season. No player nationally played more total snaps (1,461) than the Thorpe and Biletnikoff winner as the Big 12’s Defensive player of the year.
Hunter recorded 96 receptions for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns on offense while leading the Buffaloes in the secondary with 11 passes defended and four interceptions.
Add Comment