Insider Says Jaguars Made Most Interesting Pick in Draft

The Jacksonville Jaguars shocked the NFL world when they traded up in the first round to take cornerback/wide receiver Travis Hunter. Hunter was the best overall player in this year's draft. The Jaguars did not want to miss out on the player who could not only fill one but two of their biggest needs.

The Jaguars' new regime went after it in their first draft as members of the Jaguars organization. The Jaguars got the pick they've been eyeing for a long time in Hunter and are now improved on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. The Jaguars had a good draft overall and now will look to get to work with their rookies and get them ready to play at the NFL level.

A lot of credit has to go around for everyone who was involved in the draft process for the Jaguars. They did a good job of making trades both up and down and getting the players they needed to fill in the areas that were left empty.

Sports Illustrated's NFL senior insider Albert Breer said that the deal went down to get Hunter to Jacksonville was interesting.

The deal was agreed to in principle on April 7, after just two days of negotiation between Jags GM James Gladstone and Browns GM Andrew Berry. At that point, Jacksonville had only had 15 minutes of interaction with Hunter—which happened face-to-face at the combine, in a formal interview at Lucas Oil Stadium. They stuck to their guns on not making an exception to their no-top-30-visit rule with him. They didn’t even put him on a Zoom.

So how do you get that much conviction on a guy to invest that much into him?

Well, first and foremost, the combine interview did have an impact. In it, the Jaguars saw two overriding qualities in the Heisman Trophy winner. One was maturity, in just how prepared he was. The other was curiosity, in that they could see he had an insatiable hunger for learning more and more about football, in a meeting that was really focused on the defensive side and his ability to play corner in the NFL (rather than receiver).

If Hunter is what the Jags think he is—years. I’m sure they’ll all have these fun twists and turns. But what’s most interesting is how creative the Jaguars forced themselves to be in vetting this very, very high-end acquisition.