Travis Hunter won’t be the NFL’s Shohei Ohtani after Jaguars’ position change

The Jacksonville Jaguars’ decision to trade up for Travis Hunter in 2025 was a risk, albeit an understandable one at the time. The team traded its 2025 and 2026 first round picks and their 2025 second-round pick to move up three spots and guarantee they could take the Heisman Trophy-winning CB/WR who showed the ability to take over games by himself.

It was a lot to give up by the Jags, but it made sense. This was a team in dire need of superstar firepower at both of Hunter’s positions, and the biggest justification for the trade was that Jacksonville was ostensibly getting two players in one. Now the plug has been pulled on that idea, less than a year after the trade. Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network is reporting that Hunter is being moved away from WR for the upcoming season, and will instead be a full-time starter at corner, who is used sparingly in the pass game — a significant shift from the 50/50 dream the Jags floated a year ago.

The position switch is understandable, but doesn’t change the fundamental reality facing the Jaguars: Travis Hunter could very well be a bust, and at best they grossly overpaid for a cornerback.

We only got an extremely small sample size of Hunter at corner last season before he suffered a season-ending LCL tear in October, and he was … fine. Targeted 18 times in 101 snaps at cornerback, he allowed nine catches for 106 yards with 29 yards of YAC. Hunter looked much more comfortable playing corner than receiver when it came to the eye test, but the Jaguars tapered off his number of defensive snaps as the season went on, choosing to use him more as a receiver than a defensive back.

The lingering question for the Jaguars coaching staff is whether this focus on Hunter as a receiver was simply due to a sophomore slump from Brian Thomas Jr, or if they didn’t like what they were seeing from the rookie at DB?

There’s no question we need to recalibrate the expectations for Hunter moving forward. The idea of him being a starting corner and slot receiver are gone, now replaced with offensive usage on “obvious passing downs,” which could still see him put up numbers — but more likely means he’ll only see 5-to-7 offensive snaps per game. It also remains to be seen if Hunter can be an offensive asset in this role, or more of a liability — especially if opposing defenses can learn cues about the Jaguars’ passing attack simply by seeing Hunter enter the game.

If the reality is that Hunter is simply the highest-drafted cornerback in NFL history, then there will be a mountain to climb to justify both the No. 2 overall pick, as well as the cost to trade up to get him. While far from a perfect analytic method, Pro Football Focus graded Hunter 73.2 on defense last year, which would have made him the 22nd-ranked cornerback in the league last year. That’s simply not good enough moving forward, and Hunter will need to show Top-10 ability as a DB to make the pick worth it.

The whole conversation around Travis Hunter has now pivoted. Instead of being a generational, Deion Sanders-esque two-way player, we’re now needing to ratchet back in expectations and wonder if he’s trending closer to being a jack of all trades, master of none in the NFL. Offensively last season we saw a receiver who didn’t have the polish to take the top off NFL defenses, and at corner there was a mixed bag of success and failure.

Jacksonville figures to be a very good team in 2026 regardless of what happens with Travis Hunter. It remains to be seen though whether he can be an additive piece, or whether this could result in a massive misstep. There is a simple reality here that the Jaguars spent two picks to get a WR and CB in one player, when they could have sat at No. 5 last year, taken Tetairoa McMillan or Emeka Egbuka at WR, and then used this year’s pick to get a corner — potentially even make the trade for Trent McDuffie that the Rams did, offering better draft picks in the process.

Through that lens it’s impossible to see how the Travis Hunter move was worth it.