Former Jacksonville Jaguars’ center Mitch Morse, who retired earlier this offseason, recently appeared on Good Morning Football, and among the topics discussed was the second overall pick, Travis Hunter.
In short, Morse is a big fan of Hunter and what he can bring to the Jaguars.
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“He is a remarkable football player to watch, unbelievable what we’re even discussing, an offensive guy playing defense, defense playing offense, I think physically, he can do it all,” said Morse via Jaguars on SI.
As far as the process for learning both the offensive and defensive schemes, Morse would go on to say, “The thing that I don’t people think people talk about enough is the install. You have two different installs that are very intensive, both on offense and defense, and talking to the guys that are in Jacksonville right now, Liam Coen’s offense is not the easiest thing to get his head around.
“Smart guy, smart kid. Football is his life. It seems like who says he can’t do it? It’s just going to be a beautiful thing to see matriculate.”
Once the pick for Hunter was made, the Jaguars already had in place what his schedule would look like. However, throughout this entire process, and not only in the offseason but in season, Jacksonville will have to remain “fluid,” as Coen said, when it comes to Hunter’s schedule.
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In the early going of offseason programs, the plan is to have him onboarded on the offensive side of the ball and, from the sounds of it, soon he will begin taking practice reps on defense–although Hunter has already started learning the playbook and terminology on that side of the ball.
As far as what specifically makes Coen’s offense more challenging, Morse had this to say:
“I would just say it’s the multitude of things, also just so many things in one play that you can either check in or check out, depending on which is every offense or defensive scheme, but just the multitude of maybe packages, how that’s run, everything’s based off the wide zone. So for offense might not be too hard. I know the route schemes are going to be a little bit intensive.”
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A phrase we’ve heard from other coaches under the Sean McVay tree is the ‘illusion of complexity.’ In short, what this means is running a variety of plays from just a few personnel packages, helping to create mismatches, along with like-plays, or plays that build off each other by beginning similarly but ending up quite different.
All of that can keep a defense off-balanced and guessing, which then gives the offense the upper hand. And while it may be complex for the defense to react to, that’s part of the “illusion” because the offense is able to just react and play fast.
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: Former Jaguars C Mitch Morse on Travis Hunter and Liam Coen