Travis Hunter gave Jacksonville the kind of game they imagined when they drafted him. He also gave the Jaguars a pretty honest look at how hard this whole two-way thing can be.

Early in Sunday’s 34–31 loss to Houston at Wembley, Nico Collins beat Hunter on a double move for 42 yards, setting up the Texans’ first touchdown. Later, a pass interference flag on Hunter moved Houston to the 1-yard line just before halftime. The Texans scored two plays later. The fourth quarter was spectacular, but it didn’t come out of nowhere, and it definitely didn’t erase everything that came before it.

Jacksonville fell behind 31–21 late in the third quarter when Trevor Lawrence found Hunter for 26 yards. On that same drive, Hunter added a seven-yard catch, then took a pass from the backfield into the end zone for another seven. His touchdown pulled the Jaguars within three with 11:26 left. Three catches, 40 yards, and one drive that suddenly made a comeback feel possible.

Houston went right back at him when they took the field. Collins caught a 21-yard pass on third-and-11 during the next Texans possession, with Hunter getting involved in the tackle. A few plays later, Houston had second-and-goal from the Jacksonville 4 and a chance to rebuild their ten-point lead. C.J. Stroud threw toward Xavier Hutchinson. Hunter jumped the route and picked it off in the end zone.

For a few minutes, he was the answer on offense and the answer on defense. Cam Little’s 60-yard field goal tied the game with 1:55 left. Houston still won on Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 49-yarder as time expired, so nobody in Jacksonville should try to sell this as some kind of victory. But Hunter gave the Jaguars a way back into a game that was starting to slip away.

The touchdown and interception came on consecutive possessions.

That's some rare company. Hunter became the first player since Brian Dawkins in 2002 to record a touchdown catch and an interception in the same game. He’s the third player to do it in a regular-season game since the 1970 merger, joining Dawkins and Roy Green. The stat is fun. Watching Hunter help create seven points, then take seven points away, tells you a lot more about why Jacksonville wanted him in the first place.

Jacksonville Has Been Building Toward This

The Jaguars traded up to No. 2 in the 2025 draft for Hunter, sending Cleveland the fifth and 36th picks, a fourth-rounder, and a 2026 first-rounder in the deal. That’s a serious investment in one player. Jacksonville made it because Hunter had been a difference-maker at receiver and cornerback at Colorado, and the team wanted to see some version of that in the NFL.

His rookie year showed flashes before it ended after seven games. Hunter caught 28 passes for 298 yards and a touchdown, but a knee injury in practice ended up needing surgery and cost him the last ten games. He came back this season with a different balance to his workload: cornerback first, with offensive opportunities mixed in around it.Through the first two games, he’d played 66 defensive snaps and only ten on offense. Coach Liam Coen called it a “balancing act.”

By Sunday, the cornerback work had grown. Hunter played 98% of Jacksonville’s defensive snaps, and ran just seven routes on offense. But he still got four targets, catching all of them for 59 yards and a touchdown. Fantasy Points Data also had him 10th out of 172 players in separation score among players who ran at least five routes. He came into the game with just two catches for 17 yards across the first five weeks, so this was easily his biggest receiving game of 2026.

The defensive numbers backed up that side of his game, too. He allowed a 56.3 passer rating when targeted and produced -0.313 EPA per play in coverage. He also has two interceptions this season, with the first coming against New England in Week 3.

That’s the clearest picture yet of what Hunter can bring. He can make an impact as a corner, and he doesn’t need a dozen routes to matter on offense. Seven routes and four targets isn’t a normal weekly expectation, but it does show that Jacksonville can find him when they want to.

Brian Thomas Jr. also didn’t play in the second half against Houston, which created an unusual receiver rotation. Sunday showed what Coen can draw up for him when the opportunity's there; it didn’t settle exactly how many opportunities he’ll get. Coen made the goal pretty clear:

We have to keep getting him the ball and keep building off of it and making sure it fits within the rhythm and flow of the game. He definitely helped us in a position to win that game today.

That sounds like the right next step. Keep trusting him at corner. Give Lawrence a reliable set of plays that gets Hunter involved each week, whether he lines up at receiver or comes out of the backfield like he did on the touchdown. Build enough of a role that the offense can turn to him before they're down ten in the fourth quarter.

Hunter will still lose some routes. He’ll still draw flags. Houston made sure those plays stayed part of the story. But when Jacksonville needed a score and then desperately needed a stop, the same player delivered both.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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