LA Rams' WR Davante Adams weighs in on Jaguars' Travis Hunter playing both ways

USA Today

4 days ago

Davante Adams recently shared his thoughts on the Jaguars' Travis Hunter playing both wide receiver and cornerback.
LA Rams' star wide receiver Davante Adams really wants to see the Jacksonville Jaguars' Travis Hunter play at a high level. However, he has his doubts that it can be done on both sides of the ball.
While appearing on 'The Pivot Podcast,' Adams was asked which three players around the NFL he wants to see succeed this season. At the top of Adams' list was Hunter.
"I want to see Travis Hunter do his thing," Adams said. "I'd love to see him go and ball, whether it's offense or defense."
Adams is, however, skeptical that Hunter can bounce back and forth between wide receiver and cornerback on a regular basis at the NFL level.
"I don't even think it's possible to do, for real," Adams said via Bleacher Report. "Not at a high level. It's hard enough to go cover a punt and then be on one side of it. That's just a lot of mileage, man. I'm not even concerned so much if he can do it over the course of a game or a season, it's more like, how long is his career gonna be if he's playing that many snaps."
Adams continued, "All you're doing is doubling your risk for injury, one, and I don't wish that on him. I hope that he can play an injury-free season and go ball out. But it's just the reality, the more you're on the field. It's already a 100 percent injury guarantee. Once you get out there playing both sides, now you have to tackle, you gotta tackle Derrick Henry with that frame... That's a lot of football to play."
Since the Jaguars made the decision to trade up for Hunter prior to April's draft, the plan has been to play him on both sides of the ball.
Most of Hunter's practice time at this point has come at wide receiver, where the team believes more refinement is needed, not to mention learning a robust playbook under Liam Coen.
During last Friday's scrimmage, Hunter played both offense and defense. Then, in Tuesday's practice, he switched back and forth between the two positions as practice progressed.
Helping Hunter accomplish this feat of playing both sides of the ball is that he "doesn't get tired," as Coen put it recently.
Throughout this process, the Jaguars have had a very detailed plan in place for Hunter to make sure he's getting the time he needs at both receiver and cornerback. The team has, however, remained fluid and quick to adjust when needed.
"We were in a position to be close to somebody that we felt like changes the math," GM James Gladstone told ESPN's Dan Graziano. "Like, quite literally changes the math. You now have an additional player on one side of the ball on game day that nobody else has the luxury of tapping into. It was like, 'Oh, wow, this could actually be an option, and we don't foresee it ever being an option again.' Unless this becomes more of a norm ... we're looking at an opportunity that will never really present itself again. So we might as well, if we want, try and swing it."