'He wants to be the greatest of all time:' One bold trade, Travis Hunter and why the Jacksonville Jaguars nailed this

What a lesson for all NFL GMs trying to wake up downtrodden teams: Be bold. James Gladstone, Liam Coen and the Jaguars wanted to make a "statement," and they hit the jackpot.

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His hopes. His dreams. His future. In a split-second, Travis Hunter saw it all vanish before his eyes.

The night was Oct. 1, 2021. His Collins Hill Eagles were playing hated Peachtree Ridge. No. 12 in black catches a receiver screen, glides toward the sideline and slams the brakes to redirect back inside where a swarm of bodies await. Three defenders violently smash Hunter. Then, a fourth. His body’s somewhere inside the mosh pit, twisted like a pretzel.

On all fours, Hunter army-crawls toward the sideline in agony. There’s an audible scream. The replay is grisly.

By then, he was a senior. The No. 1 recruit in the nation.

But in this split-second, it felt like those five stars glistening underneath his name on scouting sites faded away. Hunter was immediately consumed by the unknown. Drew Swick, the team’s defensive coordinator then, looked into Hunter’s eyes and saw nothing but sadness. And horror. Football was everything to Hunter and football — it appeared — was being stripped from his hands.

“It was right in front of us,” Swick recalled, “and you see the kid’s thinking about his future. He thought he was done.”

Collins Hill proceeded to punish its rival, 63-0.

Hunter thought for sure that his leg was completely shattered.

Upon further inspection, it was hairline fracture. Hunter vowed to return to the field by the state playoffs— two weeks sooner than expected — and did exactly that. He caught nine balls for 109 yards with two TDs on offense and added an interception on defense in a 49-7 blowout win over Lowndes in the Georgia 7A quarterfinals. (“They don’t ever get beat like that,” Swick says.) All Hunter’s done since then is constantly bet on himself. He rescinded his commitment to Florida State to follow Deion Sanders to tiny HBCU Jackson State. Then headed to Colorado. All along, he truly envisioned himself revolutionizing the sport as both a wide receiver and cornerback.

Hunter polished off his collegiate career with a Heisman Trophy.

Now, he’s heading to the pros.

This 2025 NFL Draft will be remembered for the Jacksonville Jaguars shooting their shot.

In their very first draft together, 34-year-old GM James Gladstone and 39-year-old head coach Liam Cohn gifted a truckload of picks to the Cleveland Browns for the rights to Hunter: their No. 5, No. 36 and No. 126 selections this year, in addition to a first-rounder in 2026. Jacksonville also received fourth- and sixth-rounders back. Very rarely do you ever see a team ever mortgage this much for a non-QB. The price was steep but — one decade from now? — nobody will remember the price. Rather, this will go down as a master class tutorial in how to wake up a franchise that’s been dead for most of 30 years. Right here is how a 4-13 team swiftly snaps into contention.

Everything we’ve thought about draft picks and rebuilding is wrong. Stockpiling ammo for the future is an ancient strategy. For whatever reason, these Browns enjoy trading down and loading up on average-to-bad players. The pain from this year’s trade will make the 2012 Julio Jones gaffe feel like a gentle bug bite. The Browns have been there, done that, and are apparently OK reliving history. No thanks. Give me the electroshock therapy in today’s game. Give me the team that identifies a star player and does everything in its power to acquire that star.

The message in Duval County was deafening: This is a new day.

The message in Cleveland is the same it’s always been: Hang with us a few more years, everybody.

Gladstone spent the last four years as the Los Angeles Rams director of college scouting and assured he’s quite familiar with Les Snead’s cult’ish F Them Picks mantra. “So for our fans, I’ll tell you, don’t be scared,” he added. “This is something I’ve uniquely positioned to navigate.” Hunter is worth the swing because all of the picks in the world do not matter unless you hit and Hunter is the ultimate hit: a player singularly capable of changing the game at any instant on both sides of the ball.

Cleveland isn’t alone. The bet here is that the Tennessee Titans will also look back with regret.

Because all along, Hunter was the perfect face of any moribund franchise, any team stuck in the cycle of searching for an identity.

Swick knows exactly what’s going through the mind of the best player he’s ever coached.

“He wants to be the greatest of all time,” Swick said. “From the very beginning, that’s been his goal: to be the best offense, best defensive player. And when he sets his mind to something, he does not stop working towards it.

“That’s the difference between him and every other person.”

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The plan is to use Hunter primarily as a receiving weapon for quarterback Trevor Lawrence, and work him into the defense. Jacksonville exhausted many hours of work into figuring out what’s realistic. Head coach Liam Coen said they had several conversations with athletic trainers, sports science experts, coaches and equipment members to devise a plan.

Gladstone is the visionary. The GM wants fearlessness to be a trademark of this regime.

So considering the Jaguars view Hunter as both “intangibly rich” and an athlete who can transcend everything we’ve always thought about the game, this was a no-brainer. Moments after the selection, Gladstone set the bar high. He described Hunter as someone who can elevate “not only this football team, not only this city, but the sport itself.”

“Along the way,” Gladstone continued, “you can count however many drafts you want to, there are players who have the capacity to alter a game. There are players who have the capacity to alter the trajectory of a team. There are very few players who have the opportunity to alter the trajectory of the sport itself. Travis — while he has a lot to still earn — in our eyes has the potential to do just that.”

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This was no brash, last-second gamble at the poker table.

The Jaguars reached this decision the right way.

Everyone first discussed the top prospects “in silos,” the GM detailed, and made a concerted effort to sleep on their thoughts. Quickly, it became clear that Hunter was a cut above. Of course, there was no guarantee Cleveland would play ball. After all, GMs see their true loves sail off to other teams all the time. The Jaguars tried not to get their hopes up. By early April, however, the Browns were willing to play ball and work out the framework of a potential trade. It’s true that GM Andrew Berry’s squad has a litany of needs in the wake of the Deshaun Watson disaster. These Browns have obviously been an analytically-run operation for a while, too. Paul DePodesta of “Moneyball” fame is still listed the team’s “chief strategy officer.”

But star players spark turnarounds in the NFL. Not carefully carrying the two in computing on-base percentage.

For a hot second, it looked like the Jaguars were tip-toeing into such a five-year plan. Coen’s crew released veterans at a Homer Simpson rate the first week of March. But with one move that effectively burnt millions of mock drafts to the ground, the Jaguars can now realistically compete for the division in 2025.

Kudos to Gladstone and Coen for keeping their intentions under wraps. The only time the Jaguars even spoke to Hunter was at the NFL Combine in early February. The 18-minute speed date was enough.

“When he walks into a room, the light turns on,” Gladstone said. “Regardless if the electricity is in fact switched up. That was a moment that resonated with us.”

He asked the coaches on both sides of the ball smart questions. After Indy? Coen and Gladstone investigated the person at a deep level to see if he really could pull off double duty. There’s a reason just about every college superstar playing both ways settles in on one position… and here’s Hunter claiming it’ll be no sweat because there are more breaks at the NFL level.

Coen brought up the fact that Hunter starts training his body at 5 a.m., and that he’s a 4.0 student. All of it feeds a true “feel for the game,” he said.

Up to this point, it’s been all talk. Coen and Gladstone have both explained their philosophies in full. There’s been plenty of “catchphrases,” the GM said, using air quotes. He wants this trade to serve as a statement for how the Jaguars will operate for years. Football isn’t won with endless board meetings inside a front office. Coaches can only do so much with gameplans and playcalling, too. Playmakers rule this sport and Hunter is one of the very, very best playmakers to go pro this generation.

That’s what is most encouraging for these Jaguars. Sure, Coen got this job because he brought the best out of Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay, but he’s not taking himself too seriously. He gets it.

“There’s so many schemes you can devise and execute,” Coen said. “Ultimately when you have players that can win on their own and do something with the ball — on their own — I can’t really coach that. Defensive coordinators can’t really coach for that. Ultimately, you’re looking for players: ‘Can they win on their own? Can they impact our offense in that win?’ Yes, he does.”

Jacksonville sincerely views Hunter as a player who’ll challenge all preconceived notions about the sport.

Gladstone declared that the “boundaries of the game of football were built to be challenged.”

“And we want him,” Gladstone added, “to be nothing more than him.”

So, here’s who Travis Hunter is through the scope of a coach who was around him from ninth to 12^th grade.

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These days, Swick is the head coach at Collins Hill and the school’s been attracting a slew of move-ins because of Hunter’s ascent. Back when Hunter first moved into town from Florida, Swick was an assistant coach. The new freshman, “135 pounds soaking wet,” didn’t start right away but eventually stole a senior’s spot. Sophomore year, he was solid. Junior year, “he became Travis Hunter.” Swick saw the swagger kick in. It became routine for Hunter grip one-handed catches — he made it look easy.

“He was making plays that I’d never seen before,” Swick said. “That junior year, you knew he was going to be special.”

Both state championship games, he pulled down one-handed grabs.

Another catch against Grayson comes to mind. (“He splits two defenders, catches it, spins. The guys were looking confused like, ‘How the hell did he catch that?’”)

Or take the national championship game against Graham-Kapowsin. (“He posterizes their corner. The guy hits him. He leans forward like he’s going to land on his face, somehow maintains his balance and then dives into the end zone right before halftime. I mean, unbelievable.”)

Nobody on the Collins Hill team was ever stunned because these were the plays Hunter made all the time in practice.

To the normal high school football player, they were impossible. To him? Natural.

His father played semipro ball. His mother was athletic, too. But Swick believes these special traits were more earned, than genetic gift.

Hunter is an avid fisherman, glossing the cover of SI with a largemouth bass in each hand. Major League Fishing pro Matt Becker spent time angling with Hunter and believes Hunter could’ve been a pro bass fisherman if he so chose. Other than this, he might play some Call of Duty: Warzone. But Hunter never parties. Despite being that source of electricity Gladstone detailed — Hunter sported a hot-pink suit coat in Green Bay, Wisc. — Swick actually calls him an “introvert” in many ways. He’d rather train nonstop.

There’s also more to his theatrical touchdown celebrations. All have a deeper meaning for his mother, a friend, a coach.

Through a three-TD performance against North Dakota State, he treated the end zone as a wedding floor. His final score was a hypnotizing grab — the DB’s forearm is hooked around his body and it does not matter. Swick said the herky-jerky dancing number that day was personalized for a Collins Hill coach who took him in at one point his junior year when his grades were slipping: Frontia Fountain.

Which hints at another key to Hunter’s rise. Before this move, he lived at the Metro Extended Stay hotel. More specifically, Hunter, his mother, stepfather and three siblings were all jammed into a small apartment room that included only two beds and one bathroom. There was zero privacy for all family members. Swick describes the building as more of a “trap house.” A Collins Hill native himself, Swick never even knew the building was active.

It was so downtrodden for so many years, he assumed it was abandoned.

“I had no idea that place was even livable — that people were living in there — until I picked him up for practice,” Swick said. “It’s been torn down for a reason. He never wanted to go home. That's all you got to know. He didn’t want to go home.”

As a result, Hunter spent even more time on the football field doing extra work.

He moved in with Fountain, his grades improved, his football career flourished.

Hunter also played basketball and Swick believes he could’ve grown into an Olympic sprinter if he wanted. Whenever the football team ran 200s, Hunter was a full “five, six, 10 steps” ahead of the fastest kid on the track team.

When IMG Academy, the football power in Bradenton Fla., made a run at Hunter, he stayed loyal to Collins Hill.

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It’s hard to articulate that innate feel for the game. Simply, you want Travis Hunter on the field as much as possible. You want him playing positions that allow his instincts to control the game. So, that senior year, Swick moved him to safety. Coaches saw him take away half the field at cornerback and figured they might as well let him roam the entire field. Offenses averaged only 5.2 points per game when Hunter was on the field, a number that would’ve been even lower if you exclude garbage-time points vs. JV second- and third-stringers.

Still, Swick agrees that Hunter should predominantly play wide receiver. He’s worried about Hunter’s slender frame getting battered around by the NFL’s larger backs 50+ snaps a game. The Jaguars will devise a plan for Hunter at corner. Perhaps they bring him in at nickel in key situations: third downs, red zone, two-minute drills. There will be ways to strategically unleash his sticky coverage and ball-hawking.

The Jaguars’ No. 1 priority should be elevating Trevor Lawrence, the quarterback who inked a five-year, $275 million contract. Even the coaches who were fired maintain that the 2021 No. 1 pick has an elite gear inside of him.

No team in the league has a better young duo at receiver than Jacksonville. Brian Thomas Jr. caught 82 passes for 1,282 yards with 10 touchdowns last season. When friends asked Hunter which rookie wideout he loved watching, he pointed to Thomas. (“He’s very slept on. I’m excited to get to meet him and get to play with him and make that dynamic duo.”)

The Jags’ offense needs all the explosion it can possibly get.

When Hunter vows to go down as the greatest player ever, his former coach does not believe it’s bluster. Or foolishness. He means it. “There’s not many dudes like that,” Swick said. “He’s that guy.” There’s no pressure because Hunter has always held himself to that lofty standard internally. Moments after the Jaguars made him the No. 2 overall pick, Hunter was asked by local media about the pressure that comes with a move like this. On Zoom, the wide receiver’s face scrunched and he insisted he feels none whatsoever.

“They did everything they could to come get me,” Hunter added. “Now, I have to do everything I can to help win and help the organization. Uplift them.”

This trade was similar to the Houston Texas trading a future first to move up from No. 12 to No. 3 for Will Anderson Jr. in 2023, a deal lambasted in real time. He’s now one of the best defensive players in the sport. Deeper than that, new coach DeMeco Ryans understood that Anderson represented everything he was trying to build in Houston. He was a special leader. So, here. Take all the picks you want, Arizona. The Texans secured “The Terminator,” profiled here last summer.

Era to era, countless GMs are terrified of parting with precious draft picks.

The more picks at your disposal — their logic goes — the more chances they’ve got at making contact and meticulously piecing together a playoff roster.

But then there are the GMs who prefer a grand slam over a handful of singles and a double. This takes guts from an executive who’s been at the helm one decade let alone two months like Gladstone.

The night of the pick, he was asked where this unflinching mindset came from.

“Every step that I didn’t take that related to fear, I regret it,” Gladstone said. “So that’s not something I intend on doing the rest of my life. … Not being scared is something that goes a long way. Courage goes a long way. With that, and with inexperience, that’s where fear starts to set in. The fear of the unknown is something — if you can work past — there’s no telling what you can get to.”

Defensive tackle Mason Graham may grow into a damn good defensive tackle next to Myles Garrett. Linebacker Carson Schwesinger might get a sack or two blitzing through the A gap. Perhaps the Browns even find themselves a fine offensive guard with the Jags’ 2026 first-rounder, too. Next to everyone in Duval County, the happiest people with Berry’s decision reside in Cincinnati, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

These teams in the AFC North don’t need to deal with Travis Hunter twice a year.

Cleveland had an opportunity to pump oxygen into its organization… and passed.

There’s nobody on this offense who scares any coordinator this season but, hey, the quarterback room does consist of Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel, Deshaun Watson and Shedeur Sanders. The Browns just may have the opportunity to break in their 41st, 42nd and 43rd starting quarterbacks since rejoining the NFL in 1999. Woof.

Down south, there’s hope. One moment, Hunter was army-crawling in agony. The next, he’s searching for houses in Jacksonville on the eve of the draft. He had a feeling this was happening.

Honestly, the draft doesn’t need to be complicated.

This year’s class featured a pair of prospects with legitimate Canton aspirations: Travis Hunter and Abdul Carter.

Why wouldn’t a professional team do everything in its power to secure such a talent?