JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Travis Hunter’s first appearance on the Jacksonville Jaguars defense will be coming next week.
Coach Liam Cohen said the two-way standouts are learning an offensive and defensive playbook, but they chose to catch a pass in the Jaguars’ two-day rookie camp that ended Saturday. The team will get him some defensive reps for the first time in the final week of Phase 2 of the offseason conditioning program.
“We made the decision from just a while to today, that we wanted to clean up some of the things we might have missed yesterday. [and] He gets an extra rep on the offensive side of the ball and next week he will start rolling on defense,” Cohen said after about 90 minutes of training.
The Jaguars’ plans for the Hunter, who played receivers and cornerbacks at Jackson and Colorado universities, was that it was a more complicated system and he was more comfortable, so he launched an offense to get time to defend. However, Hunter is already beginning to go through a defensive playbook.
“You just have to get used to it,” Hunter said. “There are different types of calls, but other than that, it’s very easy to defend, you have to get used to attacking.
“The concept is different from longer phones [on offense than defense]. ”
Cohen said Hunter has already learned some coverage, despite not spending as much time as offensive in the defensive playbook.
“He was able to dig deep into some of our three deep coverage. If he has to reside behind three at a time, then we’ll call our three deep coverage on the outside, if he already knows all of those calls,” Cohen said. “So at the end of the day, it’s in the defensive side of the ball, in the communication. The technique and basics are we going to continue, but that’s really being on the same page as the rest of the backend from a communication perspective.
“He obviously has to learn both sides of the ball. He’s a smart guy in soccer. The game makes sense to him. And now it’s just the extra time he has to spend and do to succeed.”
The Heisman Trophy winner played 1,481 snaps and received 1,258 yards and 15 TDs along with four interceptions on defense at Colorado last season. He averaged 113.9 snaps per game.
The Jaguar traded for the Cleveland Browns and moved three spots to second place to draft Hunter.
