{"id":1043722,"date":"2026-09-04T22:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T22:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1043722\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T22:23:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T22:23:16","slug":"what-is-the-jaguars-plan-for-travis-hunter-in-year-2-plus-my-ranking-of-the-nfls-top-5-cornerbacks-latest-nfl-news-analysis-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1043722\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Jaguars’ plan for Travis Hunter in Year 2? Plus, my ranking of the NFL’s top 5 cornerbacks | Latest NFL News, Analysis & Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travis Hunter<\/a>‘s highly anticipated rookie campaign came to an abrupt conclusion when the No. 2 overall pick suffered a season-ending knee injury during practice in October. But if you thought that setback would end his days of playing both ways, you were wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite all the skepticism around the idea of a two-way player in the modern NFL, Jaguars head coach Liam Coen and general manager James Gladstone are committed to their plan of having the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner fill roles on each side of the ball. Yeah, they’re tweaking the usage formula, but the general sentiment remains the same: Jacksonville brass ultimately envision the dynamic athlete shuffling back and forth between cornerback and wide receiver on a team that expects to compete at a championship level. The Jags have openly expressed this intention all offseason.<\/p>\n

“He is set to play both sides of the ball<\/a>,” Gladstone said during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show back in May. “The piece that I think we can expect to see is actually an uptick in corner usage. Last year, it was a higher volume, higher percentage of wide receiver usage than it was corner. I think we can expect to see that corner percentile and count go up. That’s not to say anything impacts his availability and usage on offense. It just means that cornerback usage will increase.”<\/p>\n

Over seven games in 2025, Hunter spent two-thirds of his snaps from scrimmage on offense (305 of 459, per Next Gen Stats). Typically serving as a WR3\/4 in Jacksonville’s spread-formation packages, the talented playmaker caught 28 passes for 298 yards and a touchdown, but the non-contact knee injury happened just as he was assuming a more prominent offensive role. In what ended up being his final game of Year 1, Hunter logged his first 100-yard effort, providing the Jaguars with a silver lining in an otherwise-humiliating loss to the Rams<\/a> in London. Commanding a whopping 14 targets in that contest, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder corralled eight balls for 101 yards, scoring his first NFL touchdown<\/a> on a deep corner route and generally showcasing the playmaking potential that inspired Jacksonville to aggressively jump up the draft board<\/a> in order to secure his services.<\/p>\n

Heading into this season, Jacksonville still views Hunter as a potent offensive weapon, but the current roster makeup calls for him to major in defense, at least at the outset.<\/p>\n

“It’s not to say [his usage] won’t increase on offense, either, but it was lower on the defensive side this past season,” Gladstone told Eisen. “We also have a different defensive cornerback room, and the bodies are different than it was a year ago. Our roster construction is different than it was a year ago, so it’s more fitting to slot him at corner than it was last year.”<\/p>\n

Part of the rationale for primarily deploying Hunter on defense early this season revolves around second-year DC Anthony Campanile’s desire to play stickier coverage on the perimeter. Jacksonville swapped cornerbacks<\/a> with Cleveland last October, trading Tyson Campbell<\/a> for Greg Newsome II<\/a>, but Newsome experienced some struggles in Duval before ultimately departing in free agency. On the plus side,\u00a0Montaric “Buster” Brown<\/a> really established himself as a solid starter, motivating the Jags to hand the 27-year-old corner a three-year, $31.8 million extension this offseason. Still, Jacksonville had an opening in the opposite CB slot. And Campanile tweaked his coverage plan this offseason: Instead of leaning on traditional zone, the Jaguars will play more match concepts with man principles. This plays to Hunter’s strengths as an athletic cover man with supreme ball skills. The decision to place him at left cornerback makes perfect sense, putting a bona fide ballhawk on the more-targeted side of the field. (Most NFL quarterbacks are right-handed, so the defensive left is routinely targeted more often than the right side of the field.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Furthermore, while Hunter was sidelined by injury last year, Jacksonville’s receiving corps really came together during the team’s eight-game winning streak to close out the regular season. Veteran trade acquisition\u00a0Jakobi Meyers<\/a> immediately established a rapport with Trevor Lawrence<\/a>; Parker Washington<\/a> broke out in spectacular fashion: and Brian Thomas Jr.<\/a> rekindled his big-play ability. Consequently, the Jags aren’t in a position where they need to lean on Hunter as a wideout.<\/p>\n

This plan makes plenty of sense to me. During the 2025 pre-draft process, I ranked Hunter as the No. 1 prospect\u00a0at wide receiver and cornerback<\/a>. However, I frequently suggested the Jackson State\/Colorado product was\u00a0a more natural CB<\/a>. On defense, Hunter’s able to showcase the “see ball, get ball” skills that have stood out since he was a five-star recruit<\/a> and YouTube sensation<\/a> at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Georgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Hunter‘s highly anticipated rookie campaign came to an abrupt conclusion when the No. 2 overall pick suffered…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1043723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[39],"tags":[529,145117,8999,58172,143883,2505,8017,9006,533,1232,530,109932,528,7149,62,8016,146306,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1043722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-analysis","tag-christian-gonzalez","tag-denver-broncos","tag-derek-stingley-jr","tag-devon-witherspoon","tag-houston-texans","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-patrick-surtain-ii","tag-scouts-notebook","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-sports","tag-travis-hunter","tag-trent-mcduffie","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1043723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}