Hunter X Hunter

The two-way Travis Hunter experiment illustrates that the young Jaguars showrunners aren't afraid to think outside the box.

Perhaps the impossible is merely the unprecedented, and the unprecedented is simply the unattempted.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are trying to develop Travis Hunter as a bona-fide, every-down two-way player, the first in the NFL since Deion Sanders in 1996, who was the first since Chuck Bednarik in 1960. Hunter was the first two-way full-time starter at the major college level in decades for Colorado in 2023 and 2024. Champ Bailey played cornerback and wide receiver for Georgia in 1998 and 1999; South Jersey legend Gordie Lockbaum finished third in the Heisman voting as a Holy Cross running back/safety in 1987.

Hunter, in short, is attempting to do something that has only been done a handful of times, and only for brief intervals, in the last 65 years. If he pulls it off, it’s very literally a generational feat.

And he might just pull it off.

“He can handle it,” said Trevor Lawrence, per Jeff Howe of The Athletic. “That’s what’s unique and special about him. He’s the best-conditioned guy I think I’ve ever seen. He can run all day up and down the field. I haven’t seen him tired one time. He’s fresh when he goes into the locker room after practice. Everybody else is gassed, and he’s like, ‘I feel great.’ It’s unique.”

“He’s one of the most crazy in-shape players I’ve ever seen. His stamina is crazy. He can just go … forever.” said Jaguars head coach Liam Coen, per Howe.

To paraphrase Flannery O’Conner, a man with crazy stamina is hard to find. But the key to playing two positions is also learning two positions. And that’s a challenge the Jaguars are addressing with great intentionality.

Intentionality? Are the jargon-loving young Jaguars showrunners rubbing off on me?

"You want to give him a couple days offense, a couple days defense, and then give him an opportunity to go flip-flop within the same practice and then that will kind of become the norm," Coen said of Hunter after a practice last week, per ESPN’s Michael DiRocco.

Hunter’s practice schedule was different during OTAs, but Coen discovered that the long gaps between sessions on one or the other side of the ball were suboptimal. "That's too long to kind of go without doing anything on maybe the other side of the ball," Coen said. "So we learned something there.”

“But every single day that he is on one side of the ball, he will meet with the other side of the ball at least once, maybe twice, as well."

Coen is 39 years old. His boss, general manager James Gladstone, is 16. (Roughly 34, actually. His date-of-birth is not public record. Catch him if you can.) Offensive coordinator Grant Udinski is 29. These guys are young enough to consider Sean McVay the Old Guard. They operate with the arrogance of youth. That’s not a bad thing. Traditional wisdom is often mere ossification.

One reason two-way players are rare is because they create a logistical nightmare for the coaching staff. Which set of often-concurrent meetings does the player attend? Which first-team unit does he line up with during drills? Which coach does he report to on which day? The greater the infrastructure, the greater the impediments.

Customizing a schedule for one player requires coaches to change their habits and question how they assemble each day’s itinerary. You might as well be asking 99% of college and pro coaches to grow ponytails.

DiRocco is tabulating Hunter’s snaps on each side of the ball. After Monday’s practice, Hunter had played 48 total snaps on offense and 47 on defense.

Snaps are just the tip of the practice iceberg, particularly for a rookie. It sounds like Hunter is getting a day’s worth of footwork drills or JUGGS machine sessions at cornerback for a few days and at receiver the next few. Pedagogically, this makes more sense than trying to blast him with an information/expectation spigot. A math teacher doesn’t teach slope one day, congruent triangles the next and then slope again on the third.

But how does Hunter look? How does ANYONE look in July training camp sessions? AWESOME. Beat reporter Demetrius Harvey is one of a handful of people in a small press pool providing day-by-day Hunter/Jaguars updates. He’s impressed. Carlos Sanchez of FanSided, meanwhile, notes that Hunter is carrying shoulder pads and helmets for the veterans to and from the practice field, just like every other rookie does. Yes, but is he carrying two sets of pads?

Travis D. Holmes of BigCatCountry is another fine follow on the Hunter beat:

The “route analyzers” Holmes is referring to are likely those extra-thirsty social media wannabe film experts who pretend to know how to analyze practice reps. Players are often not going at game speed during one-on-ones, especially in July. They are also often under coaches’ instructions to emphasize one particular skill — running a route at a precise depth, for example, or demonstrating a specific release — so they probably aren’t doing things exactly the way they would do them in a game situation. Anyone clamoring into a beat reporter’s mentions to offer coaching notes on a practice rep is just saying “I have never attended a football practice before, at any level in any capacity.” But I digress.

Jaguars fans will get an extended look at Hunter on both offense and defense in Friday night’s scrimmage at EverBank Stadium. I hope the Jaguars broadcast footage on their website, as teams often do. I’m just sicko enough to watch a spectacle that promises to be far more interesting than Thursday night’s Hall of Fame game.

I believe the Jaguars can fine-tune Hunter into a quality starting cornerback AND wide receiver. But we’ve spent so much time asking if they could that we forgot to ask whether they should.

A two-way player incurs an increased injury risk, by simple virtue of more rolls of the dice, before accounting for factors like the effect of fatigue on biomechanics. The risk is probably not doubled, but the multiplier must be non-trivial: a 25% increase, conservatively. If a two-way starter is injured, his team must then rely on two backups.

Moreover, an outstanding cornerback OR receiver is more valuable than a serviceable starting cornerback AND a serviceable starting receiver. Would you trade Justin Jefferson for, let’s say, Rashod Bateman and Nate Wiggins? The Vikings probably wouldn’t; the Ravens probably would. That’s a trade the Jaguars make every time Hunter spends three days cross-training instead of mastering one specific set of skills. Heck, even Primetime himself was little more than a #2 receiver who stopped playing offense late in his one two-way season.

But maybe we are looking at the Hunter experiment the wrong way.

Maybe cross-training as a receiver will make Hunter a better cornerback. Or vice-versa. Richard Sherman’s college experience as a receiver informed his defensive play. Rookies at the scouting combine often talk about how learning different positions in high school or as underclassmen made them better all-around players. It’s possible that hyper-specialization and analysis paralysis at higher competition levels nets diminishing returns: players who are more robotic and less instinctive, perhaps.

Moreover, drills at different positions on different days could strengthen one set of muscle groups while resting others, thereby reducing injury risk, at least on a per-play basis.

The NFL may be full of cornerbacks who could be package slot guys. It’s also full of edge rushers who could probably outperform the backup tight ends and strongside linebackers with more to offer the offense than the token fullback. There are some 6-foot-7 offensive tackles with 84-inch wingspans who would give quarterbacks fits as interior defensive linemen with their hands in the air on third-and-long. I bet some 330-pound guards have some ideas about how to stop a Tush Push. It’s unlikely that there is only one Taysom Hill in a universe teeming with receivers who were high-school quarterbacks and third-string quarterbacks who run (and sometimes throw) like receivers.

We don’t know how many potential two-way players there are, because teams rarely try new things, even at the college level, even with the rarest of athletes. Football innovation at the high-stakes level operates according to “one strike and you’re out” rules. Coaches crave the validation that comes from someone else’s failed innovation. Lots of coaches are quietly, ghoulishly waiting for one serious short-yardage injury so they never have to field a “Tush Push” question again. If Hunter pulls a hamstring tomorrow, we’ll wait another 30 years for the next two-way experiment.

I don’t think Hunter will last 17 games, many of them in the Jacksonville swelter, as a two-way starter in 2025. At some point, at either position, fatigue and inexperience will make him less capable than his backup.

Hunter and the Jaguars could be laying the groundwork, however, for something we’ve never seen before. And I’m rooting for whatever that turns out to be. It’s healthy to challenge expectations, establish precedents and shake up the status quo. And I don’t want to be the one who tells a young person to strive for less than they are capable of so they can fit into our neat little boxes.

What Happens in Vegas

I have no idea what went on with Christian Wilkins and the Raiders. I don’t know which teammate he kissed, why he kissed him and how it really relates to the team’s effort to void $35.2 million in contract guarantees. It’s unclear if this is a bullying situation, a gay-panic situation or just some overblown sideshow to Wilkins’ unwillingness to undergo offseason foot surgery.

Thinking about the Wilkins incident is like trying to hold a puff of smoke in your hands. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Someone is lying, hiding or misrepresenting some of the scant details in this not-so-erotic thriller. Probably several someones.

All that’s clear is that Wilkins no longer plays for the Raiders, and that the Raiders look like the Bluth Banana Stand.

The Raiders appear cheap, petty and spiteful for trying to take back their guarantees on what appears to be a daisy chain of technicalities. The “kiss” sounds like a GOTCHA to bolster their claim that he voided the contract.

The Raiders look downright stupid for restructuring the contract of a player they were disenchanted with in mid-March; they guaranteed him $27 million of the money they now want back just weeks before their dispute over his need for foot surgery. They look comically unprofessional: what’s an obviously-disgruntled employee you are itching to terminate even doing in the team facilities in July? Per Josina Anderson’s reporting, the Raiders did not issue any documented write-ups against Wilkins, and there is no evidence of any intermediate disciplinary steps in the four months between we love you $27 million much and give us back our money.

(Yes, the March guarantee was a Raiders effort to create extra cap space. Try telling that to an arbiter. We only paid him that money because we don’t handle our finances very well. And now we need it back! But for totally legitimate reasons!)

The Raiders mishandled their way into a situation and are now trying to bumble their way out. In the process, they are drawing maximum attention to an incident which one of their employees found embarrassing, for whatever reason.

Wilkins sounds like a tool, too: a possible malingerer and “prankster” with a documented history of finding the crotch-grab or turtle-tap hilarious because he has never been on the receiving end. It sounds like he deserved to get released. But the Raiders’ case that Wilkins voided his guarantees boils down to “he did a bunch of stuff we didn’t like, and we fired him based on the first excuse we could find after he filed the grievance.” That’s not how guarantees work. Based on the facts we now have, a union lawyer will make the Raiders look silly, and an arbiter will laugh them out of the room.

Maybe the Raiders are sitting on documented evidence that Wilkins’ March restructuring was contingent on the foot surgery or something. Sure. Or, since we are talking about the Raiders, we’ll discover that Wilkins has been taping all of his conversations with his coaches.

Trey Hendrickson Reports to Bengals Camp

The Bengals “won” the Hendrickson “negotiation.”

A weaker organization would have capitulated to Hendrickson’s contract demands and found a way to pay one of the most important players on their roster fair market value. But the Bengals are strong. And stubborn. And poor. And cheap.

Hendrickson has one year left on his current contract. The Bengals are well within their rights to make him honor it. The system is stacked in their favor. Holdouts are prohibitively costly. Hendrickson balked, sulked and vagueposted. Bengals owner Mike Brown called Hendrickson “not so easy to deal with” and said the negotiations reached the point of “silliness.” Actual Bengals boss Katie Blackburn stopped just short of saying Off with his head. It was like watching the most dysfunctional couple you ever met get divorced over Facebook … except that they got back together at the last moment.

Hooray for the Bengals! Their hopes on defense — their only chance to not go 7-10 due to a bunch of losses by final scores like 41-31 — rest with a disgruntled employee. Maybe Hendrickson will play lights-out for his next contract. Maybe he’ll feel a little twinge in his hamstring that won’t go away until next March.

Extending Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins while turning Hendrickson into a resident malcontent is like purchasing two new Lamborghinis but only getting liability insurance. It’s like going all-in at the poker table, then wandering off to pay the parking meter before all cards are dealt. Contract conflicts are won by dragooning players, but Super Bowls are not.

NFL owners appear to be particularly feral these days. Mark Davis, or someone within the Raiders organization, suddenly thinks that guarantees are merely suggestions. I wrote about Jerry Jones’ sudden miserliness at the start of the week, and Stephen Jones has since doubled down on daddy’s displeasure by further shaming Trevon Diggs and taking a fascinating maybe he prefers being poor approach to the Micah Parsons negotiations. Let’s face it: these are high times for rich assholes. Some of them may be a little tipsy on their power.

Once the season starts, it won’t matter who won the negotiations, only the games. Only then will we get a true sense of whether bringing someone like Trey Hendrickson to heel is really worth the potential consequences.

Too Deep Housecleaning

Here’s the upcoming schedule at the Too Deep Zone:

Monday: Ultimate Preseason Viewing Guide! 32 teams, 32 reasons to do something better with your precious remaining summer evenings.

Sometime Next Week: Panthers All-Time Signature Moments. This feature will be longer and more thorough than it has any right to be.

Also Sometime Next Week: A feature covering camp news or whatever.

Monday August 11th: Preseason Week 1 Walkthrough. Remember all those preseason games you didn’t watch? I watched them, so you didn’t have to!

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