Travis Hunter’s mixture of size and speed made him a two-way player at Colorado and it led the Jaguars to trade up to take him with the second overall pick of the 2025 draft, but that didn’t stop him from changing his body ahead of his second NFL season.
Hunter spent his first full pro offseason working his way back from the knee injury that ended his rookie season and he told reporters on Friday that he also worked to bulk up. Hunter said that he put on 10 pounds while working out and that initial concerns that he might hamper his speed turned out to be unwarranted.
“I was scared at first. I was like ‘Oh, dang, I ain’t never played at this weight. I’m gonna feel heavy, not going to be able to do what I do,’” Hunter said. “Training and being able to put those months in, not just on the grass but in the weight room too. Just putting in that work, it made me feel lighter on my feet when I finally touched the grass. I’m just happy to be at this weight and continue to play at this weight.”
Hunter said he’s been clocked at 22.6 miles per hour since putting on the weight, which is a new high for him and he hopes to keep adding speed before resuming his roles as a wide receiver and defensive back in Jacksonville this fall.
Jaguars Clips
Liam Coen and Ben Johnson oversaw major turnarounds in their first seasons as NFL head coaches in 2025 and they’ve been linked again by the topic of motivating their teams for the coming season.
In a recent interview, Coen said it has been easy to motivate his players with the Jaguars by pointing out how they’ve been overlooked despite a 13-win season. Coen said on 1010XL that he doesn’t see any discussion of his team while scrolling the NFL’s website, but sees 40 pictures of Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
During a Friday press conference, Johnson was asked if he’d heard Coen’s comments and whether he feels he has the opposite problem with the Bears because there is more hype around the team.
“We’re the number one regression candidate, so I think we’ve got plenty of motivation ourselves,” Johnson said. “We talked about Caleb in the past. He’s used to handling a lot of attention, so I’m not worried about that.”
There are plenty of cases in NFL history of teams that take big strides one season without being able to sustain that growth in the years to come. Coen and Johnson are coming at that challenge from different angles, but both will have to succeed in order to set themselves up for long runs in their current jobs.
Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski landed head coaching interviews this offseason and he’ll do some work to build up his credentials for the next step up the ladder this preseason.
Head coach Liam Coen told Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union that Udinski will call the majority of the offensive plays for the team in August’s preseason games. Udinski called the plays in Jacksonville’s preseason finale last year.
Coen said Sean McVay gave him the same chance with the Rams earlier in his career and that he wants Udinski to get that opportunity.
“Sean provided me that experience in [Los Angeles] and I want do the same for Grant,” Coen said.
Udinski interviewed with the Bills and Browns before signing a new deal with the Jaguars. If the team is able to repeat its success from 2025, that could turn out to be a one-year extension of his stay in the AFC South.
Jaguars wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. would like to put the 2025 season in the rearview mirror.
Thomas had 87 catches for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns after being drafted in the first round in 2024, but his second season halted all talk of him jumping right to the top of the list of NFL wideouts. Thomas caught less than half of the balls thrown his way and he was credited with 10 drops en route to 48 catches for 707 yards and two touchdowns.
The drop in production led to trade chatter this offseason, but the Jaguars were quick to shut it down and call Thomas a big part of their plans for 2026. That talk and other doubts about his upside still found their way to Thomas and he credits a conversation with his father for putting him in the right mindset to bounce back.
“We heard everything that was going on, all that, but he just told me, ‘Come out here and be undeniable,’” Thomas said, via Mark Lane of the Associated Press. “That’s just something I live by every day. I want to be undeniable.”
Jakobi Meyers and Parker Washington stepped up as the team’s most reliable wideouts during a 13-4 season, so Jacksonville has a full deck of options in the passing game. They’d still like to see Thomas get back to something close to that undeniable rookie form as they try to defend their division title this fall.
The Jaguars made a couple of roster moves involving cornerbacks as they opened training camp on Tuesday.
They announced that they have signed Corey Ballentine to the 90-man roster. He will take the roster spot of Dane Jackson, who has been placed on the reserve/retired list.
Jackson signed with the Jaguars in June, but Tuesday’s move suggests that the 2020 seventh-round pick has decided to pursue other opportunities. Jackson began his career with the Bills and returned to the team after spending the 2024 season with the Panthers.
Ballentine played five games for the Cowboys and one game for the Patriots last season. He has also played for the Giants, Jets, Lions and Packers. He has 103 tackles, an interception and a forced fumble for his career.
The Jaguars put a pair of offensive linemen on their physically unable to perform list ahead of the start of their training camp.
They announced that Cole Van Lanen and Garret DiGiorgio have been placed on the list. Both players will be ineligible to practice until they are off of it and they can be activated at any time.
Van Lanen closed out the 2025 regular season as the team’s starting left tackle, but he injured his knee in Week 18. He started 10 games overall and has played 50 games for Jacksonville over the last four seasons.
DiGiorgio started at guard and tackle while at UCLA. He signed with the Jaguars after going undrafted this year.
When Jaguars head coach Liam Coen was discussing the team’s offensive backfield during their offseason program, he called the competition for playing time at running back “truly wide open” between Chris Rodriguez, Bhayshul Tuten and LeQuint Allen.
Now that training camp is about to start, Coen seems to be focusing in on one back’s upside. Tuten was a fourth-round pick out of Virginia Tech last year, but he began his college time at North Carolina A&T and Coen said on The Schrager Hour podcast that he faced “a little bit of a learning curve” when it came to all the facets of playing in the NFL.
Tuten now has a year under his belt and no longer has Travis Etienne ahead of him, which has Coen looking for a major leap forward this fall.
“He does a great job of finding the end zone and his yards after contact and rushing yards, man — when he can get going and get downhill, I mean, he was 4.28 coming out. So he can fly,” Coen said. “Now it’s more so, he was so conscientious about ball security last year and doing right. Okay, now Tuten, you got it. You understand it more. Now just go be you. Go do what got you here. Go be special, that’s who you are. We’re definitely expecting Tuten to have a big year for us.”
The Jaguars exceeded expectations by winning 13 games last season, including nine of their last 10 in the regular season. That sets a higher bar for this year and Tuten making good on Coen’s prediction would help position them to stay among the contenders in the AFC.
On one hand, the NFL has tried to keep the Brian Flores lawsuit from getting to the merits of the claims because it’s the first page from the standard big-company-that-has-been-sued playbook. On the other hand, delaying the Flores case delays the best available path to a long-overdue reckoning.
ESPN, which is now partially owned by the NFL, has posted an article regarding the Rooney Rule. The headline declares that coaches believe the process is “rigged” against them. (It’s refreshing that ESPN has pursued an issue that the league would prefer be ignored; we’ll see whether and to what extent ESPN promotes the article through its endless car wash of shows.)
The starting point, and centerpiece, of the ESPN story is the runaround former Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham experienced after he had served as the league-mandated second minority interview for the Jaguars head-coaching job that went to Liam Coen in early 2025.
It was perceived to be yet another box-checking sham interview, aimed at allowing a team to comply with the Rooney Rule before hiring their preferred candidate.
Here’s the key paragraph from the ESPN article: “More than a dozen minority coaches declined to comment for this story, citing concerns that speaking candidly would jeopardize future opportunities. Among the 13 Black coaches who did speak -- some on the record but most anonymously -- the issue is clear: Even with hiring rules in place, they feel they cannot overcome ownership bias or the long-established relationships that shape hiring.”
Even Graham, who talked about his Jacksonville experience on the record to ESPN last year, declined to comment this time around.
Meanwhile, the NFL faces political pressure to abandon “DEI” efforts, now that the acronym has been morphed into a slur in sheep’s clothing. In Florida, attorney general James Uthmeier has been attacking the NFL over inclusion efforts. Nationally, the political winds continue to blow against the notion of placing diversity above merit. (As Jon Stewart observed earlier this week, “Meritocracy. It is a beautiful word. Where the fuck is it?”)
Back to Flores. Along with Ray Horton and Steve Wilks, Flores has fended off the NFL’s multi-year effort to vacuum their claims into the NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration. Now, after more than four years, it’s time to get down to talking to witnesses, gathering documents, and proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the NFL and many if not most of its teams make key hiring decisions with race being, consciously or not, a motivating factor.
It could get messy, but civil litigation is often uncivil. Owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell will be grilled under oath during pre-trial depositions. Some or all of the 25 minority coaches who won’t speak to ESPN reporters will receive a subpoena to testify under oath, which will not only protect them from retaliation but compel them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The Flores case becomes the only way to allow the facts to be developed, presented, and evaluated. A jury will determine, based on all of the evidence, whether Flores and his colleagues have shown that the NFL’s teams have a longstanding racial bias when it comes to hiring head coaches, offensive coordinators, and General Managers.
Many will say (because they always do) that businesses can hire whomever they choose. That opinion is grossly misinformed; federal law and the laws of many states prevent certain factors from being considered when hiring (and firing) decisions are made.
Real change can be effected in American society in one of three ways: the passage of legislation, the implementation of regulations, or the verdicts rendered through litigation.
That’s why large companies hate lawsuits. They can’t control a process that could force them to change their ways by attaching a massive financial consequence for their past failures to do so.
At some point, the NFL may realize that, win or lose, a public trial in open court will have significant negative consequences. The league and its teams could be tempted to make Flores and company a settlement offer they can’t refuse.
That’s the key. Will the league make an offer so large that the individuals won’t be able to reject it? Will they reject it anyway, realizing that taking their claims all the way to a verdict may be the only way to get the NFL and its teams to finally change their ways?
Veteran cornerback Levi Wallace did not play in the NFL after landing on Jacksonville’s injured reserve list last summer and he won’t be coming back to the field in 2026.
Wallace announced his retirement on Instagram on Friday. Wallace noted that he was undrafted in 2018 and went on to spend eight years in the league, which he termed a “not bad” run in the league.
Wallace signed with the Bills after playing at Alabama and started all 57 regular season and playoff games he played in four seasons with Buffalo. He spent the next two seasons with the Steelers and saw his final game action with the Broncos in 2024.
Wallace had 333 tackles, 12 interceptions, 30 passes defensed and a fumble recovery in 96 career regular season games. He also had 23 tackles, an interception and a sack in six postseason outings.
Marcellus Wiley, as they say, is having a moment. And not the good kind.
The former NFL defensive end and ESPN/Fox personality was arrested over the weekend for domestic battery. On Monday, his wife made very strong allegations against him in divorce paperwork and in a request for a restraining order.
Wiley has posted on social media clear, loud denials as to the alleged battery, and as to the claims made by his wife in court filings.
Wiley has yet to deny this one: TMZ reported on Wednesday that Preferred Bank sued Wiley in December 2025 for failing to satisfy a $500,000 loan.
Per TMZ, Wiley and his company, Dat Dude Entertainment, borrowed the money in May 2023, promising to pay it back after one year. The bank, per TMZ, claims it didn’t receive the money or the associated interest. Wiley allegedly received multiple extensions until December 2025, when the bank then filed suit.
As of this posting, Wiley has not addressed the TMZ report.
Wiley spent 10 years in the NFL, playing for the Chargers, Bills, Cowboys, and Jaguars.
