Yahoo Sports senior NFL writer Frank Schwab, senior NFL reporter Charles Robinson and senior betting analyst Ben Fawkes discuss the Jaguars first round pick sitting out of the team’s preseason finale and what it says about Jacksonville’s approach to using him this season. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Let’s transition real quick.
Travis Hunter won’t play this weekend now, Charles, you were there at Jaguars practice and Travis Hunter probably injured himself.
He went down hard.
I wanted you to talk about that.
Basically what Liam Cohen said was, look, if, if, if we had a regular season game this week, he’d probably play, but what’s the point?
We want him healthy for week one.
But go through that.
What did you see out of him at practice when he got hurt and are any of the guys concerned about Travis Hunter?
Like we’re talking about this guy playing maybe 75 to 80 percent of the snaps.
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He’s already hurt going into the season.
That ain’t good.
Well, I think this factors now because it’s, it’s when you talk about worrying about Travis Hunter and injury concerns and the snap counts, you want something demonstrable to present it.
That supports being worried, right?
We hadn’t had that up until now and I was, I was at practice and they had their full on scrimmage where their ones face their ones, their twos face their twos, the threes face their threes, and it was meant to be an intense, you know, practice.
That was the point, that was the whole reason it was set up that way and I told you on the previous show and we did not yet know that he I believe he did hurt himself on this play, but I watched him dive as a receiver on a play, go for a ball, landed really hard, and I thought to myself, and he laid there and I thought to myself, oh man, he’s hurt himself like, oh, and I thought maybe this is a bad injury because he rolled around for a second, you know, and then eventually popped up and he, he went back and, I thought, okay, we’re okay, but oof, that was a little scary.
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Uh, but the way he dove, he did, he landed on the upper body, like shoulder area, the way receivers do when they dive for balls, um, and now that they’ve held him out, they didn’t play him in the last two preseason games, and you hear Liam Cohen saying, do we want him now or do we want him week one, you know, which makes sense.
It does make sense, but again.
This presents data to you.
This is what you’re worried about.
And now are you, you’re you’re already seeing effectively the first presentation of load management where they’re like, hey dinged himself now we gotta hold him back so that we have them for something else.
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I feel like this is the journey that they’re starting on with Travis Hunter.
Like, is this how this is gonna be?
We don’t know, but we’re now finding out we’re seeing things present themselves that I think could be repetitive throughout this attempt to play him in two positions and all, all the former players like coming, people are asking, right, can he play both ways?
No one is saying it’s a skill issue.
It’s a wear and tear, right?
That’s, that, that is the issue.
We’ve already seen this in practice, you know, Allen Iverson, right?
We’re talking about practice here.
That is, that’s the big issue.
And also the Jaguars, like we’re talking about before, they don’t have a lot behind him, right?
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Travis Hunter is supposed to be a force multiplier both on offense and defense.
Brian Thomas Jr. looks like a star.
If he’s your #1 and now Travis Hunter is the #2, all of a sudden that’s taking coverage away from Brian Thomas, potentially, you know, Diay Brown, they signed.
It isn’t like you have, you know, a star wide receiver core there.
Same thing on defense, right?
You have a great, uh, number one corner.
Um, but the rest of the defense, Travis Hunter is drafted to be filling on both sides there, so you’re always gonna play him a little more on one side, if not all, on that, but you’re gonna have to manage that.
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And I think that’s, that’s a big thing for the Jaguars.
That’s.
This goes back to all the, you know, when we had our fun talking about Otani, right, in the conversations about Travis.
If part of him breaks, right, if, if there, it’s, it’s gonna dramatically change, you know, I think ultimately how they use him, and I would, I would bet that percentages are higher on him only playing one position inside of 3 years than him continuing to play two positions beyond 3 years.