Jaguars' Coen Shares Training-Camp Plan for Travis Hunter

Sean McVay said this offseason he was especially impressed with how his former pupil Liam Coen evolved the Buccaneers’ offense last season. The new Jaguars head coach isn’t afraid to make improvements to a plan.

That’s what Jacksonville has done with regard to Travis Hunter. After organized team activities and the mandatory minicamp this offseason, Coen and his coaches assessed and tweaked how they mapped out every minute of the dynamic rookie’s time.

While Hunter spent the first training-camp practice exclusively on offense, Coen said Hunter will get days of exclusive defense and mix in offensive and defensive reps on the same day.

“Probably within the first six practices or so,” Coen confirmed after practice Wednesday morning. “You want to give them a couple days offense, couple days defense, and then give them an opportunity to go flip-flop within the same practice. And then that will kind of become the norm.

“Once we do that, that'll kind of become the norm and how we operate, but it'll probably be within the first week or so.”

Coen said part of mapping out every minute of Hunter’s time is how he uses when his teammates are in special-teams practice periods. For example, on an offensive day like Wednesday, special-teams periods are when the Jaguars assign Hunter to defensive drills, fundamentals and cornerback footwork.

“Trying to make sure that we maximize his time, our time, so that we can ultimately get the best outcome,” Coen said.

Part of that best outcome, Coen explained, is looking back to look ahead. That’s what the coaching staff did with the plan they had for Hunter after Jacksonville drafted him. And after training camp, they’ll do it again for the regular season.

“It evolved a little bit from the offseason program,” Coen said. “We saw there was a span where maybe he practiced on offense, let's call it a Thursday because we didn't do anything on the Fridays, and then he had Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then Monday was on defense. That's four days without doing anything on offense.

“Well, we learned that was too long. That's too long to kind of go without doing anything on maybe the other side of the ball. So, we learned something there. And we also, within these blocks where we're three days on with an off day, it allows us to map it out maybe a little bit cleaner and give him more opportunities.”

Coen added that when Hunter practices on one side of the ball, he’ll meet with the other side at least once and possibly twice that day.

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