{"id":360038,"date":"2025-09-11T17:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/360038\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T17:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:45:11","slug":"quick-thoughts-jaguars-wr-db-travis-hunters-role-to-grow-in-week-2-vs-bengals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/360038\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Thoughts | Jaguars WR\/DB Travis Hunter’s Role to Grow in Week 2 vs. Bengals"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE \u2013 Senior writer John Oehser, senior correspondent Brian Sexton and team reporter Kainani Stevens offer quick thoughts on the Jaguars as they prepare to play the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a 2025 Week 2 game<\/a> Sunday at 1 p.m.<\/p>\n

\n John Oehser, Jaguars Senior Writer\u2026<\/p>\n

More to come. Jaguars wide receiver\/defensive back Travis Hunter<\/a> remains one the NFL’s biggest stories \u2013 and the thought here is his story will get bigger as the season continues. That’s because his snaps \u2013 and big-play opportunities \u2013 are only going to grow. Hunter, the No. 2 overall selection in the 2025 NFL Draft, played 42 snaps on offense and six on defense in a 26-10 victory over the Carolina Panthers<\/a> at EverBank Stadium this past Sunday. That led many observers to believe that will be Hunter’s normal workload moving forward. Not likely. While Hunter will remain a key part of the Jaguars’ offense because of his explosiveness and open-field ability, his playing time on defense likely will increase significantly quickly because he’s too skilled and too valuable at cornerback not to play. Head Coach Liam Coen<\/a> has been transparent discussing Hunter, saying his relatively light defensive workload Sunday was the result of missing 10 days during training camp. Coen, too, said he expects Hunter’s role to “expand.” Hunter’s debut was comparatively quiet. The guess here is this noise gets louder soon.
\nFree-agent frenzy. Free agency can be a risky NFL proposition. But there are cases when it’s necessary and productive, and this Jaguars season may be an example of the latter if Week 1 results become a season-long norm. The victory over Carolina featured a slew of front-line performances from players who signed as unrestricted free agents this past offseason: Safety Eric Murray<\/a>, guard Patrick Mekari<\/a>\/center Robert Hainsey<\/a>, wide receiver Dyami Brown<\/a>, cornerback Jourdan Lewis<\/a> and defensive end Dawuane Smoot<\/a>. Murray had a deflection that led to an interception, with Mekari and Hainsey keying a running offense that produced 200 yards. Lewis had multiple key plays, including a late-game interception, and Smoot registered the Jaguars’ only sack. “For the new guys in the room, everybody’s looking at us like, ‘Oh, are they going to make plays, are they going to do what we sign them to do and stuff like that?'” Smoot said. “I feel like we all showed up.” Free agency isn’t the path to long-term stability. But the Jaguars appear to have used it efficiently this offseason with great rewards thus far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE \u2013 Senior writer John Oehser, senior correspondent Brian Sexton and team reporter Kainani Stevens offer quick thoughts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2060],"tags":[137,53766,7,130,212,125,63379,2401,213,134,135,131,36829,133,53767,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-360038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville-jaguars","8":"tag-brian-sexton","9":"tag-category-waste-pro","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-front-page-headline","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","14":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars-at-cincinnati-bengals-2025-reg-2","15":"tag-jacksonvillejaguars","16":"tag-jaguars","17":"tag-john-oehser","18":"tag-kainani-kai-stevens-zaskey","19":"tag-news-front-page-headline","20":"tag-news-gameday","21":"tag-news-jaguars-news","22":"tag-news-quick-thoughts","23":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115186914027780756","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}