People within the NFL still question whether Jacksonville Jaguars rookie Travis Hunter can handle full-time two-way duties in the pros after he made his preseason debut Saturday, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
The Heisman Trophy winner played a total of 19 snaps, 11 on offense and eight on defense, in a 31-25 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Fowler reported Sunday on SportsCenter that kind of workload was considered a “healthy split” and one Hunter should be able to replicate moving forward. The doubt comes with whether that can be expanded to a role like the one he had at Colorado.
“They said, ‘Look, he can do it in a setting like this where it’s lower snap counts and he looks good.’ One scout told me, ‘It’s clear that he moves a little differently than a lot of other special skill-set, special athletes.’ But if you’re talking 70, 80 snaps over a game over 17 games, there’s still a lot of skepticism.
“But at least that was a good little blueprint for what you could do, how you could use him. Put him in there for a couple of snaps on offense, bring him off, get him some water, bring him back in. It’s going to be a process. I think the Jaguars are dealing with fluidity throughout. I think it’s going to be changing as we go.”
The Jaguars and Hunter are trying to break new ground. In the modern history of the NFL, no player has juggled offensive and defensive snaps at a high volume across multiple seasons.
Deion Sanders, Hunter’s college coach, is the closest parallel, and he only had one year where he got deployed regularly at wide receiver along with his usual job at cornerback.
With advancements in how players train and maintain their bodies, perhaps exceptional athletes such as Hunter can make the experiment work.
Based on their preseason opener, the Jaguars aren’t going to put too much on his plate early on as they try to find his optimal usage.