It's been a wild ride to get here. Hunter was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 draft after winning the Heisman as college football's ultimate do-everything weapon, and Jacksonville immediately said the quiet part out loud: they weren't going to make him pick a side of the ball. Then a knee injury ended his rookie year early, and the two-way experiment got put on pause before it ever really got going.
Cameron Wolfe's report that Hunter is fully cleared, with the Jaguars eyeing a near-every-snap defensive role in certain games.
According to Cameron Wolfe, Hunter isn't just healthy, he's ahead of schedule. Reports out of Jacksonville have him running north of 20 mph in rehab, reportedly faster than his pre-injury top speed, which is the kind of detail that makes a fanbase forget the injury ever happened. Wolfe's report goes further than just "he'll be ready": the plan is for Hunter to eventually play nearly every defensive snap in certain games, a workload that would be almost unheard of for a guy who's also expected to line up at receiver.
That's a real shift from how his rookie season actually played out. Before the knee injury cut it short, Hunter was leaning offense-heavy, logging around 46 offensive snaps per game to roughly 23 on defense across his 7 games. The 2026 blueprint reportedly flips that script: full-time cornerback, part-time receiver, with defense now the primary job instead of the side hustle.
That's a notable bet from Jacksonville. Two-way college stars almost never stick at it in the NFL because the workload and injury risk pile up fast, and Hunter's rookie year is exactly the cautionary tale skeptics point to. But if he's truly full-go and the team is comfortable stacking heavy defensive snaps on top of receiver reps, it's a signal they still believe the Heisman-winning, do-it-all version of Hunter is the one they drafted him to be.
Fantasy managers and Jaguars fans alike will be watching camp closely for how the snap counts actually shake out once pads come on. Wolfe's framing of "a particular game" suggests this isn't a blanket every-week plan, more likely a situational ceiling the Jaguars can dial up when matchups call for it. Either way, a healthy Hunter playing near-every-down football on one side of the ball, with real receiver snaps mixed in, is the two-way dream Jacksonville has been chasing since draft night.