Jaguars coach Liam Coen isn’t rushing to put Travis Hunter in a box.
After a rookie year that was cut short by a knee injury and limited to seven games, Hunter’s next chapter in Jacksonville is still being mapped out. Coen has spent training camp and preseason work leaning into Hunter at cornerback, and that showed up in the Jaguars’ exhibition games, where most of his snaps came on defense and his upside there stood out.
Still, Coen stopped short of locking Hunter into a purely defensive future. Asked on ‘The Rich Eisen Show’ whether Hunter’s role this season would mainly be on that side of the ball, Coen said, “I’d say not so fast,” and added, “Let’s pump the brakes and just give the guy a chance to get back from obviously a pretty serious injury in which he’s worked his tail off to get himself into the position where he can continue to do those things,” he added.
That caution makes sense for a player whose NFL sample size is tiny. Seven games doesn’t tell the full story, and it’s far too little to draw a hard conclusion about whether Hunter’s long-term value will come mostly on offense or defense. The Jaguars know he’s still young, and they’re clearly willing to let that picture come into focus gradually.
Even with the defensive emphasis, Coen made it clear the door on offense is not shut. The team hasn’t settled on the exact number of offensive reps Hunter might get, but they do see him as more than just a cornerback.
“What the exact number of reps looks like, I can’t say right now, but I do know that he’s a playmaker. He’s somebody that we want to get the ball in his hands, too,” Coen added in the interview.
For now, though, the safest bet is that Hunter’s upcoming season begins with cornerback as his primary home, a shift from the broader plans Jacksonville had for him over the summer.
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The only real question is how the Jaguars keep that standard intact as they sort through the punt return job. Washington has done enough to make the unit look settled, but rookie Josh Cameron has also worked his way into the conversation as a possible option. For a team that has built a competitive edge in a third phase that often gets overlooked, the answer there could shape whether Jacksonvilles special teams stay a strength or become one more thing to monitor as the season unfolds. [Read more 🡒]