George Pellicer spends practice doing what equipment managers do best: fixing, adjusting and solving problems before anyone else even notices them. For the Jaguars, though, his job has picked up one very specific wrinkle since Travis Hunter arrived - keeping the team’s two-way star in the right jersey at the right time.
Hunter, who plays wide receiver and cornerback, flips between offense and defense throughout practice, and Pellicer is usually right there with him. White mesh jersey on for defense, off for offense, and then back again. Over the first six days of camp, the pair have gone through that routine about 10 times, with Pellicer carrying the day’s play script and handling the wardrobe switch as Hunter moves from one side of the ball to the other.
Pellicer said the setup was considered almost immediately after the Jaguars traded up to draft Hunter with the second overall pick in 2025.
"As soon as we drafted him, we started thinking how we're going to do it," Pellicer said.
The first step was figuring out the jersey itself. Pellicer reached out to Colorado’s equipment manager to see how Hunter had handled the same issue in college.
Deion Sanders had kept it simple there, with Hunter wearing a blue jersey all the time to stand out from Colorado’s black and gold. Jacksonville wanted something different: the jersey had to match the side of the ball Hunter was on.
So the Jaguars had to build a system around the switch.
Pellicer said the mesh jersey needed to slide over Hunter’s helmet and shoulder pads without being loose enough to get in the way once he was running.
"It had to be big enough where it can go over easily over shoulder pads, but it's got to be at least trim enough where it's not baggy," Pellicer said.
That led to a small tweak from the equipment room.
"We put a little cord on the bottom, just kind of tightened up for him so it's not too dangling," he said.
The whole thing has become a practiced part of camp now, even if Pellicer says nobody has bothered timing the exchange. He hasn’t rehearsed the routine separately with Hunter, but the two have figured it out as they go, often while walking toward the sideline.
The coaches help by not calling for Hunter to go offense-to-defense back-to-back, which gives the change a little breathing room. And the plan is known by everyone involved - coaches, Hunter and Pellicer, who usually handles it himself rather than handing it off.
"We've learned it on the fly," he said. "Unless I get called to do something else, it will be me a majority of the time."
Pellicer, a St. Augustine native, has been with the Jaguars for 24 years and has served as equipment manager for five. On Aug, 4, after the team’s sixth training camp practice at the Miller Electric Center, he was also helping quarterback Trevor Lawrence get extra throwing work in by serving as Lawrence’s center while he worked on an out pattern with wide receiver Jakobi Meyers.
That’s the nature of the job for Pellicer, who summed it up simply:
"Our job is to make sure the coaches have what they need and make sure the players have what they need," he said.
As for the Hunter jersey situation, Pellicer says the Jaguars have enough of the white mesh versions to keep the routine going. He isn’t sure exactly how many they’ve used over the past two seasons, but there have been multiple ones in circulation.
"We have enough," he said.
Good thing, too. A practice-worn Travis Hunter jersey might end up meaning a lot more someday.
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Travis Hunter has given Jaguars training camp a jolt by showing up on both sides of the ball, and the early returns have matched the buzz. With Jacksonville now in full pads and fewer 7-on-7 periods to sort through, Hunter has still found ways to make an impression, spending more time on defense overall while flashing the kind of instincts that made him such a rare prospect in the first place.
He has already logged two passes defensed and an interception on defense, along with one catch on offense during the preseason, a small sample that still hints at how the Jaguars might use him. For a team trying to build something bigger than a camp storyline, the real intrigue is how far this two-way workload can go once the practices get more physical and the reps become harder to come by. [Read more 🡒]