The Jaguars wasted no time in creating noise, trading up to No. 2 overall to select wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter.
Let's look at Hunter's fantasy value in Jacksonville and how he affects the rest of the Jaguars' skill players.
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Travis Hunter 2025 Fantasy Football Outlook
What makes Hunter unique is the potential that the best wide receiver in this class may not primarily be a wide receiver in the NFL.
Per Pro Football Focus, Hunter had the sixth-highest receiving grade in the country to go along with the seventh-highest coverage grade at cornerback in 2024.
Hunter is a potential unicorn, which can cause a conundrum for fantasy gamers.
We have not seen a full-time, two-way player in the modern NFL like Hunter was in college.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Hunter won the Heisman Trophy.
We have seen a player like Charles Woodson win the Heisman who dabbled both ways but had a primary position.
Hunter played wide receiver and cornerback full-time and won the Fred Biletnikoff Award for best receiver in college football and the Chuck Bednarik Award for best defensive player last year.
He was not just good at both positions.
He is an elite prospect at both.
We have seen a wide range of comments from teams on Hunter’s deployment in the league, from a full-time receiver who is comparable to the top of last year’s class to a defensive back who moonlights at receiver.
We will follow Jacksonville’s explanation of what the pick means for additional tea leaves for his initial role, but we have a good idea that he will play offense and defense in the NFL in some capacity.
Hunter wins at the line of scrimmage.
He can also win at every level as a route runner, attacks the ball, and is excellent with the football in his hands.
It is not a coincidence that his ability and time spent at cornerback have aided his ability playing receiver and vice versa.
I still do not want to discredit Hunter's inability to play both ways in a high capacity just because we have not seen it happen.
What if Hunter impacts the NFL in some capacity as Shohei Ohtani recently did in the MLB?
That is a high-end comparison and outcome among a broader range of outcomes, but just because something has not happened does not mean it can’t happen.
What if Hunter is a one-of-a-kind commodity, and we all passed on a historic outcome out of fear that we were unsure how much receiver he would play when we know it is unlikely that he would not play any receiver?
Especially when you combine that with this wide receiver class, which is not littered with objectively excellent prospects who profile as fantasy WR1 options.
He enters the NFL in an era when a wide receiver who wins after the catch is a valuable commodity.
Most NFL offenses are not running their offenses through the archetypical X wide receiver on the outside.
Most of the best wide receivers are centered around versatility and moving around the offense.
As a result, NFL defenses are playing less man coverage, and the shadow cornerback that travels everywhere has become scarcer.
Pat Surtain only played 56 coverage snaps in the slot last season.
Even if you have a player capable of performing in that capacity at a high level, it has not been a position that has tipped the scales on a top-down defense.
Christian Gonzalez was our closest thing to a complete shadow corner playing at a high level last season, and the New England pass defense was still lackluster.
That is the top-down case for why Hunter should be pushed as a wide receiver firsthand.
Still, it is not our call how Hunter is deployed in the NFL despite that case.
I will not have Hunter over the top-end running backs in this class for fantasy, but we all have burned plenty of rookie picks on prospects that are not as good as Hunter.
Hunter has a pedigree.
He was the No. 1 national recruit in 2022 and the first five-star recruit to sign with an FCS program in the 2000s.
And we are not talking about an unproductive player.
He backed his pedigree as a recruit on the field as the Heisman Trophy Winner this season.
Only three players in this draft class had more receiving yards than Hunter last season.
Only three had more receptions.
Hunter does not have one individual metric that shows up as elite, but he is above the base rate in nearly everything.
While he may not have a hallmark metric, he has no bad ones.
Hunter ranked seventh in this draft class among wide receivers in yards per team target (2.61), averaging 7.4 receptions (6th) for 96.8 yards per game (6th), and 15 touchdowns (2nd).
He forced 24 missed tackles (7th) with a 2.5% drop rate (9th) on his 121 targets.
The Colorado offense had a high rate of screens built in.
Hunter ran a screen route on a class-high 21.3% of his routes.
But screens only made up 21.9% of his receptions (17th).
Despite getting a high rate of screens, Hunter also had 14 receptions on throws 20 or more yards downfield, which was tied for second in this draft class.
We mentioned his attacking the ball.
Hunter converted 64.7% (11 of 17) of his contested targets, which was sixth among wide receivers with double-digit opportunities in this class despite only 14.1% of his targets overall being contested catches (35th).
We did not see Hunter play a lot of slot receiver at Colorado (5.6% snap rate), but I do believe he will play more inside in the NFL in an attempt to get him access to YAC-infused targets paired with Hunter’s frame (6-foot-even and 188 pounds) not profiling as an X archetype in the NFL.
On the small sample of slot usage last season, Hunter averaged 2.51 yards per route run, which was seventh in this class.
He did all that while rarely participating in wide receiver meetings and retaining a whole playbook on both sides of the ball.
On top of everything, he is the fifth-youngest receiver in the class, turning 22 this May.
Hunter is a unique case for fantasy gamers, but he has the naturally “good at the game” gene.
The unknown amount of playing time at an actual wide receiver position will inherently push down his stock.
Out of the top-40 scorers at wide receiver in PPR points per game last year, every one of those players was on the field for over 66% of their team’s dropbacks in their games played.
It is hard to suggest that the Jaguars traded away all of this draft capital to limit Hunter.
This deal only works for Jacksonville if he can play both sides to justify the capital traded away.
He can join Liam Coen’s offense right away and operate near the line of scrimmage like Cooper Kupp and Chris Godwin, with added after-the-catch ability.
For Dynasty purposes, things are still fluid enough that his raw talent can be impactful and something that Jacksonville cannot put back in the bottle, but this does add another layer of uncertainty to the fold playing alongside Thomas Jr.
I still prefer the top of this running back class to Hunter, but he is still a mid-first-round rookie pick in those formats.
Hunter has been going around WR50 in redraft leagues, which is a fair price.
The one concern with outright fading Hunter for 2025 is that he can put together a string of impactful games to close the season, like other rookies have done.
Based on the cost, I will get some exposure to him, but for 2025 re-draft purposes, I have difficulty seeing a full path where Hunter beats me with an elite season given his immediate conditions.
Brian Thomas Jr. 2025 Fantasy Football Outlook
More important than having doubts about Hunter’s playing time at wide receiver, the Jaguars drafted Brian Thomas Jr, an alpha wide receiver, in the first round a year ago.
Thomas grabbed 87 of 133 targets for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rookie.
Averaging 2.46 yards per route run as a rookie, the only seasons better than that for a rookie wideout running 300-plus routes since 2010 have come from Odell Beckham (2.75), A.J. Brown (2.68), Justin Jefferson (2.66), Puka Nacua (2.60), and Ja’Marr Chase (2.51).
Thomas did most of his heavy lifting, carrying a passing offense helmed by Mac Jones after Trevor Lawrence was sidelined.
With everything falling apart around him, Thomas was at his best.
Apart from losing Lawrence, Jacksonville had to run its offense through Thomas since Christian Kirk, Evan Engram, and Gabe Davis missed significant time.
Thomas had double-digit targets in each of the season's final six games.
From Weeks 11-18, he was second in the NFL, commanding 33.5% of his team's targets.
We also saw Thomas display an ability to win on all levels, which was questioned because his role at LSU was based on being a field stretcher.
He played 26.9% of his snaps in the slot (higher than Malik Nabers as a rookie, who he conceded those snaps to at LSU).
On those slot snaps, Thomas was targeted on 31.7% of those routes (8th in the NFL) for 3.12 yards per route (4th).
That gaudy target share was never going to be completely sustainable for Thomas.
He can shed some target share and still be in the WR1 conversation.
Even if Hunter adds another element by pulling Thomas down a few slots, Thomas also represents a potential roadblock to Hunter's taking over as a true WR1 in the offense.
In recent seasons, we have seen that teams can have multiple fantasy-relevant wide receivers, but it is also hard for multiple players to be elite at the same time.
Ja’Marr Chase has impacted Tee Higgins as a volatile WR2/WR3.
Tyreek Hill has impacted Jaylen Waddle as a volatile WR2/WR3.
A.J. Brown impacted DeVonta Smith as a volatile WR2/WR3.
Can Hunter do the same to Thomas, or does Thomas stunt Hunter from his fantasy ceiling?
With Thomas in place, there is less incentive to push Hunter out as a feature wide receiver.
Trevor Lawrence 2025 Fantasy Football Outlook
Trevor Lawrence does get added life again as an upside QB2.
The 2024 season was a rough one for Jacksonville fans and Lawrence.
The Jaguars were 2-8 with Lawrence starting last season, with Lawrence having his worst stretch of output since his rookie season.
After completing 66.3% of his passes in 2022 and 65.6% in 2023, Lawrence completed just 60.6% of his throws last season.
His 41.8% success rate was his worst as a quarterback through four seasons.
His success rate and completion percentage suffered partially because he pushed the ball more downfield than ever in his early career.
He averaged a career-high 9.4 air yards per attempt, second only to Anthony Richardson among all players who qualified for passer rating.
Lawrence attempted a career-high 15.1% of his passes 20 or more yards downfield, which was fourth in the league.
But even on throws shorter than 10 yards downfield, Lawrence only completed 69.4% of those throws, which was 32nd in the league.
The league average on those throws was 74.2%.
Lawrence had issues preventing negative plays.
He had a career-high 6% sack rate (16th) and a 2.5% interception rate (23rd).
His 3.9% turnover-worthy throw rate ranked 35th per Pro Football Focus.
On top of all of that, Lawrence was battered and missed seven starts last season.
He suffered a shoulder sprain in Week 9’s loss to the Eagles, which forced him to miss two games.
On his return in Week 13, Lawrence suffered a scary concussion on a late hit against Houston that forced him to miss the remainder of the season.
Despite the recent struggles, Jacksonville is committed to Lawrence guiding the franchise.
He signed a massive contract extension last offseason that has him on the books through 2030.
Lawrence will still only be 26 this October.
Jacksonville hopes to turn things around and spark Lawrence under a new regime led by hiring Liam Coen as Head Coach.
Coen comes from the Sean McVay tree, with attachment to the success Tampa Bay and Baker Mayfield had last season, as well as being the offensive coordinator for Kentucky when Will Levis was drafted No. 33 overall.
TL;DR Fantasy Impact Notes
- Early-first (1.02-1.05) Dynasty WR and volatile WR4/WR5 for 2025
