With 2-way star Travis Hunter, Jaguars want ‘to look like what it looked like at Colorado’

Two-way star Travis Hunter walked into the Jacksonville Jaguars facility for the first time Friday, saw general manager James Gladstone flipping a football and grabbed it.

“It didn’t take long for Travis to produce his first takeaway,” Gladstone quipped. “It’s going to be a fun go if that’s what we see here on the horizon.”

Hunter was still carrying the ball when he arrived at his introductory news conference an hour later. It was a playful prop and set the tone for an entertaining debut in front of an audience that included the mayor, the sheriff and dozens of fans.

The Jaguars traded up three spots — they gave up significant draft capital to make it happen — to select the Heisman Trophy winner second overall in the NFL draft Thursday night. After a late night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Hunter hopped on owner Shad Khan’s private jet Friday morning and stared out a window the entire flight to Florida because he was “just excited to get here and be able to come back home and get to work.”

Hunter was serious, too.

He canceled his return flight to remain in Jacksonville, go house hunting with his fiancé and begin catching passes from quarterback Trevor Lawrence.

“I’m going to come out and do my job,” Hunter said. “I’m not going to say I’m going to change anything. I don’t want to set the expectation too high. I’m just going to come in and do my job, and hopefully we change the atmosphere.”

The Jaguars are counting on Hunter to change everything about the franchise — beginning on both sides of the ball.

“He embodies belief,” Gladstone said. “He’s a rare person. He’s a rare player. But he’s also a reminder that the boundaries of the game of football were built to be challenged.

“So, the decision to select him was actually a statement, a statement for how we plan to move, who we are, and we want him to be nothing more than him because, when he is, he elevates the space around him — from the football field to the city to the game of football itself.”

Hunter was expected to get both offensive and defensive playbooks during his initial visit. The Jaguars expect him to start mostly at receiver during rookie minicamp next month while slowly getting more and more work on defense.

Eventually, though, they plan to have him playing a similar number of snaps on both sides.

“We know that he’s going to be able to do both. We feel that in our bones,” coach Liam Coen said. “We have to have the ability to be agile and be fluid on specific days. If we don’t feel like he got enough work on one side of the ball the previous day, then we need to be able to move forward and get him those reps the next day. …

“How is this thing going to work? What do we want this to look like? We want it to look like what it looked like at Colorado, and that would be pretty good for us.”

Hunter played a whopping 1,461 snaps last season at Colorado, according to Pro Football Focus. Buffs coach Deion Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and the last NFL player to play significant snaps on both sides of the ball, allowed Hunter to take several days off after games to recuperate. The Jaguars have already discussed providing him similar rest.

Hunter will wear his usual No. 12 with Jacksonville, and he was given an official Jaguars jersey during his intro Friday. He playfully pulled it away from Hall of Famer Tony Boselli, the team’s executive vice president, and then grinned ear to ear when Gladstone said, “He’s got a smile that will light up a room.”

“Yeah, there it is. Let it shine,” the GM added.

He shared the stage with the mayor at one point and then flashed the Heisman pose. He eventually left — with the football.

“I don’t think anything comes easy to me,” Hunter said. “I got to work for it. I had to work to play both sides of the ball, even being with Coach Prime. You all just happened to see the perfect end, but I did a lot of work to get to where I’m at.

“So, I’m going to continue to put in the work, continue to grind and I’m going to just continue to do what I do.”

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