The Jacksonville Jaguars were aggressive on opening night of the 2025 NFL Draft, as first-year general manager James Gladstone swung a trade with the Cleveland Browns to select Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter with the No. 2 overall pick. Hunter starred at both wide receiver and cornerback at Colorado, so there were significant discussions about where he would primarily play at the next level.
Hunter has been adamant about playing both ways in the NFL, to the point where he had commissioner Roger Goodell announce him as both a wide receiver and cornerback when he was drafted. It remains to be seen how Jacksonville will utilize him when the regular season rolls around, but Hunter is learning both wide receiver and cornerback, and the Jaguars’ brass has a clear plan on how they will develop him as a two-way player.
“We built a plan and then sat him down and really talked through it,” Jaguars coach Liam 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.”
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Hunter was not playing on both sides of the ball in the same day through OTAs, but now that we’ve reached mandatory minicamp, he is.
Last season, Hunter played 713 offensive snaps and 748 defensive snaps, then won the Biletnikoff Award as well as Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. He caught 96 passes for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns, while recording 36 total tackles, 11 passes defended and four interceptions on defense. It still seems unlikely Hunter will be a full-time two-way player like he was in college, but it’s clear Jacksonville plans to use all of his football gifts.
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