Jaguars bet big on Travis Hunter -- through three weeks, his usage hasn't matched the cost

Travis Hunter was one of the rarest and most exciting draft prospects in the recent history of the NFL. 

An All-American and Heisman Trophy winner, Hunter caught 96 passes for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns during his junior season at Colorado, winning the Biletnikoff Award as the nation's best wide receiver. He also picked up 36 combined tackles, four interceptions and 11 pass breakups on his way to winning Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and the Bednarik Award as the nation's top defender. 

Hunter played an incredible 1,529 total snaps on offense and defense, splitting them with 753 on offense and 776 on defense, according to Pro Football Focus. Those figures represented 86.4% of the team's offensive snaps and 82.7% of the team's defensive snaps. It was practically unheard of, and it made him an extremely coveted prospect in the NFL draft. So coveted, in fact, that the Jacksonville Jaguars traded up from No. 5 overall to No. 2, sacrificing the Nos. 5, 36 and 126 selections, along with a 2026 first-round pick, for the right to draft Hunter, as well as the 104th and 200th overall picks.

All throughout the summer, there was relentless speculation about how the Jaguars would use Hunter. How much would he play on offense? How much would he play on defense? What would his actual role be on both sides of the ball? Would they even use him on both sides? Was that actually possible? Beat writers in Jacksonville tracked his practice snaps every day to try to get an idea of what, exactly, the Jags were thinking.

Through the first three weeks of the 2025 season, we actually have some idea. Thanks to Pro-Football-Reference, we know his snap rates on both sides of the ball, as well as his total statistical contributions to date.

Hunter has not played more than 68.3% of the snaps on either side of the ball, a rate that is obviously a far cry from where he was during college. His offensive snap rate has also gone down with each passing week as he has played more defensive snaps.

Some of this is explainable. Jaguars cornerback Jarrian Jones got injured in Week 2 and has played a combined 26 snaps over the last two weeks. With a cornerback out, the Jags have needed Hunter to play more often on that side of the ball. With Dyami Brown and Parker Washington available to take more snaps offensively, they could afford to cut his snap rate on offense while using him more on defense.

But the entire theory of Hunter was that he could be close to a full-time player on both offense and defense. 

That's what made him so special. If he's just going to be a part-time player on both sides, or a part-time player on offense and barely a factor on defense like he was in Week 1, then the value the Jaguars gave up to go get him isn't there. They need to use him more often to justify the price they paid. 

Of course, that just might not be possible -- as many people in and around the league speculated around draft time. There's a big difference between playing 80% or more of the snaps on both sides in college and doing it in the NFL. Even if Hunter has the physical stamina to do it (which, again, is harder in the NFL), the mental aspect of things is far more taxing, and so is the pure play strength aspect -- especially for a player his size.

There's also been an issue to date with how the Jaguars are actually using him, particularly on offense, where he's essentially been a gadget player and not an actual wide receiver. Hunter's average depth of target, per Tru Media, is just 6.56 yards. That ranks 59th out of the 65 wide receivers who have run 75 or more routes so far this year. 

His average route has had a break at 7.71 yards, which ranks 53rd among the same group of players, so it's not like he's only being targeted on his short routes. He's really only running short routes to begin with. As a result, he has just one gain of 15 or more yards on the season, and he's created a first down on only 2.5% of his routes and 12.5% of his targets -- figures that rank 62nd and 64th, respectively, out of that aforementioned group of 65 wide receivers.

Of course, it's far too early to draw any conclusions about Hunter's usage, or even about the trade just yet. 

Hunter is only three weeks into his career, after all. The Jaguars could just be ramping him up to play more often rather than having him out there for a full complement of snaps right away. And that would probably be a smart thing. You don't want to physically tax him too much right away and have him break down before you even get a chance to use him in the way he should be used. 

But the Jags do need to figure out better ways to get more out of him. The defensive usage makes sense. Hunter was an outside corner in college and he's been used that way in the pros, particularly filling in for the injured Jones as the left corner. 

But the offensive usage is not conducive to getting the most out of his skill set, even when you consider that he was rawer as a receiver than as a defensive back coming out of college. You have to be able to stretch the field vertically every so often instead of using him only around the line of scrimmage. Otherwise, defenses are just going to sit on the short stuff and even start taking away some of his run-after-catch opportunities. Considering that's been the only way he's made positive contributions on offense to date, it obviously wouldn't be ideal if that stuff went away.