JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Travis Hunter’s first appearance on defense for the Jacksonville Jaguars will come next week.
Coach Liam Coen said the two-way standout has been learning the offensive and defensive playbooks, but they opted to have him just catch passes during the Jaguars’ two-day rookie camp that concluded Saturday. Instead, the team will get him some defensive reps for the first time during the last week of Phase II of the offseason conditioning program.
“We just kind of ended up making a decision that from yesterday to today, we wanted to be able to clean up some of the things that we may have been able to miss yesterday [and] get extra reps on the offensive side of the ball and next week he’ll start to roll on defense,” Coen said after the roughly 90-minute workout.
The Jaguars’ plan for Hunter — who played receiver and cornerback in college at Jackson State and Colorado — was to start out on offense because that’s a more complex system to learn and then have him get time on defense as he became more comfortable. But Hunter already has started going through the defensive playbook.
“You’ve just got to get used to it,” Hunter said. “It just has a lot of different types of calls, but other than that, the defense is pretty easy. You’ve just got to get used to the offense.
“Just longer calls and concepts are different [on offense than defense].”
Coen said Hunter already has learned some of the coverages despite not having spent as much time in the defensive playbook as the offensive one.
“He’s been able to dive in and learn some of our three-deep coverages, what do we call our three-deep coverages on the outside, if he has to be manned up on the backside of a three-by-one, he knows all of those calls already,” Coen said. “So, at the end of the day, it’s going to be about, on the defensive side of the ball, communication. The technique and fundamentals, we’ll continue to harp on, but it’s really about being on the same page as the rest of the guys on the back end from a communication standpoint and the rest will kind of take care of itself.
“… He’s obviously having to learn both sides of the ball. He’s a football-smart guy. The game makes sense to him. And so now it’s just about putting in that time, that extra time that he’s going to have to do in order to be successful.”
The reigning Heisman Trophy winner played 1,481 snaps and had 1,258 yards and 15 TDs receiving to go along with four interceptions on defense last season at Colorado. He averaged 113.9 snaps per game.
The Jaguars traded with the Cleveland Browns to move up three spots to No. 2 to draft Hunter.