Big Cat Country
Despite having been the most tantalizing player in college football last year, winning the Heisman Trophy and being selected second overall in the draft, Travis Hunter says he still gets a little nervous.
Prior to his first NFL action, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 31-25 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers to open the preseason, Hunter said he had some jitters before the first ball on offense was snapped.
“It felt great, a little nervous, but it felt great,” Hunter, who started the game at receiver, said Saturday. “It definitely settled down when I got that first catch, when that first play happened.”
Hunter played 13 offensive snaps, finishing with two catches for nine yards. He didn’t light up the box score, but he did have one catch negated by a block in the back penalty. The starters also played just a single drive. According to Coen, Hunter asked to play more offense but was shut down to focus on his first defensive drive where Hunter joined in with the second team.
“He made a couple good catches on some option routes,” head coach Liam Coen said Saturday. “He missed that one tackle, that I noticed. I will have to watch the tape on how he operated defensively a little more but I thought offensively he made the right decisions. He made a good catch, almost broke out of one.”
While he was on offense, Hunter was used in a variety of ways to get him moving. His first catch of his career came after he was sent in motion, then back to the slot to help diagnose coverage. On his second catch, Hunter broke inside and almost used his signature spin move after the catch to squirt free. Had he kept his footing and made the turn, he had around 10 yards of space and just one defender to beat.
“I did pretty good. If we had more opportunities, we would have shown what we could really do,” Hunter said.
Hunter’s defensive night was less noteworthy for what he did compared to what he didn’t do. The rookie got caught a bit flat-footed around the 48-yard line and was a step behind Steelers’ running back Kaleb Johnson on an outside run. As everyone has seen, Johnson stiff armed Hunter to the dirt. Like with Jarrian Jones making the cover of Madden, Hunter had a good laugh about his play, or lack thereof.
“We can flush it right away and just get back to business,” Hunter said. “I know what I have to do next time.”
The weird thing with corners is the less you hear about them, the better they likely played. During Dawuane Smoot’s sack in the second quarter, Hunter was in coverage on the receiver Mason Rudolph was targeting as one of his last reads. Rudolph turned his attention to Hunter’s side of the field after scanning the left, pump faked, but was forced to scramble out and couldn’t outrun the veteran Smoot. Hunter won’t get any credit for that...
