Just a few years ago, before transferring to Houston Christian, Jalyx Hunt was a safety at Cornell. Last year at this time, he was a talented but raw third-round edge rusher.<\/p>\n
This year?<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old returns for Year 2 with the Eagles after an encouraging rookie season with an understanding of how to reach his extremely high ceiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m way more comfortable, man,\u201d Hunt said at OTAs this week. \u201cLast year, it was all coming at you fast. You just try to keep your head, play your role. Now, I feel as if I can understand the game a lot more, I can play within the player that I am and have a little bit more personality out there instead of being so cookie-cutter. I\u2019m excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eagles drafted Hunt with the No. 94 overall pick last April and many thought he was destined for a redshirt season as a raw developmental prospect. He was even a healthy scratch for the Eagles\u2019 Week 1 game in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. But then he started to get better and better and by the time the playoffs came, Hunt was a vital part of the Eagles\u2019 edge rusher rotation.<\/p>\n
After having 1 1\/2 sacks in 16 regular season games, Hunt had another 1 1\/2 sacks in the playoffs. And after having just 9 pressures in the regular season, he had 8 in the playoffs. His 12.9% pressure rate in the playoffs was way higher than his pressure rate of 7.4% in the regular season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hunt was a completely different player in Super Bowl LIX than he was in Week 2.<\/p>\n
But Hunt\u2019s rookie season just barely scratched the surface of his potential as an NFL edge rusher. And as he enters Year 2, Hunt seems to have a great understanding of what it\u2019ll take to reach that full potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offseason I just know a lot more of what is expected of me and what to expect from tackles and different players across the league,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cI just know a lot more and I\u2019ve been able to approach my game in a more professional way by figuring out what moves I want to work on, who I should watch, what I should watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a lot more technical because that\u2019s the biggest difference I\u2019ve seen is that players who are elite and good, your technicality levels are on completely different levels. If I want to be great at this position and in this league, I gotta be technical. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve really been focusing on and that\u2019s what I think has really changed between last year and this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to see why the Eagles were interested in Hunt during last year\u2019s draft. He didn\u2019t have a ton of experience as an edge rusher but had the body makeup and the athleticism to be a really intriguing prospect.<\/p>\n
But once you get to the NFL, you\u2019re probably not going to win a ton on athleticism alone. That was something Hunt figured out pretty early on going up against Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata \u2014 one of the best pairs of offensive tackles in the league \u2014 in practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are a rookie learning the position and you\u2019re going against Lane Johnson and you don\u2019t even get within like four yards of the quarterback every rep,\u201d Hunt said, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to figure something out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson and Mailata were happy to share tips with Hunt and the then-rookie was happy to take them. He also worked a ton with edge rusher coach Jeremiah Washburn, as well as the Eagles\u2019 developmental team, which includes Connor Barwin and Matt Leo. From the moment Hunt arrived in Philly, he was eager to learn and improve.<\/p>\n
The difference as he enters Year 2 is that Hunt now better understands how to concentrate those efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started last year when I learned that your bag and your plan is different depending on what side you\u2019re on, which tackle you\u2019re going against, your history with that tackle, the history they have with different moves,\u201d Hunt said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now I\u2019m just developing my bag, developing everything. When it gets into the season, being able to sit down and watch a specific tackle, seeing what he got beat with, seeing what he doesn\u2019t get beat on, how he plays, what he likes to do, what he doesn\u2019t like to do, what rushers like to do against him, that all comes into play when it turns into your plan and what you want to utilize when you go against him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eagles\u2019 edge rusher room looks different in 2025 without Brandon Graham and Josh Sweat. Hunt figures to be a bigger part of their rotation and has a good chance to be a starter opposite Nolan Smith, who returns for Year 3.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Hunt was asked a question about newcomer free agent pickups Azeez Ojulari and Josh Uche and had the same compliment about both of them: They love pass rushing.<\/p>\n
In fact, everyone in that room does. Hunt is still relatively new at the position but he\u2019s working at it every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sit down in the room and just talk about pass rush,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be in the locker room, talking about what moves to hit, why they like this move, what develops off this move. Just because we love what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a few years ago, before transferring to Houston Christian, Jalyx Hunt was a safety at Cornell. Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,4904,7,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-93177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-eagles-blog","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114602406557167479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93177","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=93177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}