Travis Hunter will play both ways for the Jaguars again this season. Critics say it’s a mistake, citing Hunter’s uneven rookie season that ended prematurely with a knee injury.
Hunter is familiar with the doubters.
“It didn’t bother me,” Hunter said Wednesday, via Michael DiRocco of ESPN. “They’ve been doing that my whole career.”
Hunter played 324 offensive snaps and 162 defensive snaps in seven appearances last season before tearing the lateral collateral ligament in his right knee during an Oct. 30 practice. He underwent surgery on Nov. 11.
Hunter finished with 28 catches for 298 yards and a touchdown on offense to go with 15 tackles on defense.
The Jaguars will play Hunter more on defense, but he will still play offense.
First, though, he has to get healthy. He still isn’t cleared to fully participate in football activities, which isn’t expected until some point in training camp.
Hunter, though, isn’t wearing a knee brace, according to DiRocco.
“I’ve got to get back on the [practice] field first,” Hunter said. “I’m excited to just be able to get back on the field and work with the guys.”
Jaguars Clips
For a time in January, it seemed as if Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski would be a head coach in 2026.
But the now-30-year-old Udinski took himself out of consideration for the Browns job that went to Todd Monken. And while he also interviewed with the Bills, Joe Brady filled that vacancy with his promotion from offensive coordinator.
So Udinski stuck with the Jags, receiving a contract extension as he enters his second season with the club.
He told reporters in a Tuesday press conference that he felt like going through head coaching interviews was “a great process to go through.”
“I was honored to be able to be considered for those opportunities, and really, it’s a testament to the work that our team and our offense has put in to kind of raise my status and elevate me to even be considered,” Udinski said, via transcript from the team. “You go through that process and you learn a lot about what you believe in and what you think and what you really are convicted in because you think about all the different things you’ve come across over your time in coaching or even before coaching, and you kind of have to whittle it down to the things that are most important to you and your core values.
“So, a lot of what you’re learning is really maybe things that you already knew, but what are your priorities? That kind of becomes the focus of those interviews because it’s such a short period of time where you’re trying to put together all of your plans and thoughts in a clear and concise manner.”
Udinski, whose ascent in coaching has been quick, noted he still feels like he has plenty of room to grow in his current role.
“There’s a lot of things that I look back on last year’s season and just like we talk about evaluating where we need to improve as an offense, a lot of it will start with me as the coordinator,” Udinski said. “And there are really simple things that I think I could have communicated this better, I could have communicated this more clearly. And then there are maybe more complicated things where we built a certain package of plays in a way where I felt like I could have done a better job of putting those plays together.
“[I] probably have a list of 200 things that, unfortunately, I could improve on. The bright side of that is there’s 200 things that I can improve on. So as a coordinator, for me personally, it’s the same approach that we take with the offense when we say we want to run the ball better, well how does that start with my role? What am I doing? How am I influencing the run game to make sure that that’s actually possible? So just like we sit down and evaluate those things, I’ve got to do the same thing for myself.”
It will be a while before the Jaguars have to submit any depth charts for the 2026 season and it sounds like the one they publish for the running back position is going to be subject to change at any moment.
The Jags saw Travis Etienne leave as a free agent this offseason and they signed Chris Rodriguez to go with Bhayshul Tuten and LeQuint Allen in their offensive backfield. Etienne got the lion’s share of the work last season, but head coach Liam Coen said on Tuesday that no one has been moved into the No. 1 role yet and that the team will let things take shape organically heading into the fall.
“It’s a group that has a lot of opportunities to them,” Coen said. “There’s a wide-open room. It’s truly wide open.”
The Jaguars finished 20th in the league in rushing yards last season. If the new approach can improve on that total, it will help their bid for a second straight AFC South title.
Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles will get to catch up with one of his former teams this summer.
Bowles said at a Tuesday press conference that the Bucs have set up a pair of joint practices with the Jets before the two teams play in the first week of the preseason. Bowles was the head coach of the Jets from 2015-2018.
There will likely be workouts with the Jaguars before the final game of the preseason as well.
“We lined it up with the Jets and we’re in the process of trying to line it up with the Jaguars, as well,” Bowles said, via the team’s website. “We’ll probably just play Kansas City.”
The Bucs practiced with both of the AFC teams ahead of the 2023 season as well.
Nate Boerkircher was the first player the Jaguars drafted in April and he became the last member of the draft class to sign with the team on Wednesday.
The Jaguars announced that Boerkircher has agreed to his four-year rookie deal. The tight end was the first of 10 selections for Jacksonville in this year’s draft.
Boerkircher played 39 games at Nebraska before moving to Texas A&M for his final college season. He had 19 catches for 198 yards and three touchdowns in 13 games for the Aggies.
The Jaguars drafted another tight end in the fifth round when they selected Tanner Koziol. Brenton Strange, Hunter Long, and Quintin Morris are the top returning tight ends for the Jags.
The NFL’s current political issues include an effort by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier to challenge the league’s diversity initiatives. Most recently, Uthmeier issued an investigative subpoena to the NFL, along with a letter suggesting that the league’s response to his initial communication may have violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act by revising “many references” on its public website to its allegedly “unlawful ‘inclusive hiring’ policies.”
Commissioner Roger Goodell was in Florida on Tuesday, for the most recent ownership meeting. During a press conference conducted at the conclusion of the sessions, Goodell was asked about Uthmeier’s ongoing assault on the league.
“I think we have been very clear about our programs, and we obviously evaluate them all the time, not just for how they get better, but also to make sure that they’re consistent with the law,” Goodell said, via the Associated Press. “We’re engaging with the Florida attorney general and will continue to. We’ll share everything we’re doing with them. We think it’s certainly within the law, but also something very positive.”
The best evidence, frankly, would be to point to the teams’ hiring practices regarding coaches and General Managers. Despite efforts to expand the interview pool to include diverse candidates, the ultimate decisions — made exclusively by the teams and not the league — do not represent the demographics of the player population.
Uthmeier, who is running for election in 2026 to the job for which he received a gubernatorial appointment, may be engaging in performative antics. Time will tell whether his letter-writing campaign and request for information becomes something more than that.
The Jaguars opened up a spot on their 90-man roster on Monday.
They announced that they have placed wide receiver Alex Bullock on the reserve/retired list. The team will retain Bullock’s rights, but will be able to sign another player to their offseason roster in the wake of the move.
Bullock signed with the Jags after going undrafted last month. He played at Nebraska for three seasons before transferring to South Dakota State last year. He had 71 catches for 936 yards and five touchdowns in 2025.
Jakobi Meyers, Brian Thomas, Travis Hunter, Parker Washington, Tim Jones, and Austin Trammell are back at receiver for Jacksonville. They also drafted CJ Williams and Josh Cameron in the sixth round this year.
The Panthers will get a chance to work against a couple of other teams coming off of playoff appearances during training camp this summer.
Head coach Dave Canales said at a Monday press conference that the team is going to hold joint practices with the Jaguars and Texans. The team will play at Jacksonville in the second week of the preseason and they’ll be at home against Houston for their final preseason game in August.
Carolina played the Jaguars in Week 1 of the 2025 season and lost 26-10.
The Panthers will be playing four preseason games this year as they are scheduled to face the Cardinals in the Hall of Fame Game along with a game in Buffalo before the two matchups with the AFC South teams.
More than five years after Urban Meyer’s disastrous stint as an NFL head coach ended following only 13 games, he has received a decision as to whether the Jaguars owe him a buyout.
They do not.
Via Brett McMurphy of On3.com, the Jaguars won the case over whether Meyer’s conduct justified a firing “with cause.” The decision saved the Jaguars more than $30 million.
Per the report, witnesses included Meyer, Jaguars long snapper Ross Matiscik, Jaguars punter Logan Cooke, former Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo, and former Jaguars G.M. Trent Baalke.
Meyer’s tenure included $300,000 in fines for the violation of offseason workout rules, the notorious decision to skip the team flight home after a Thursday night game in Cincinnati — plus an unfortunate viral video, and the allegation from Lambo that Meyer kicked the kicker during a training-camp practice.
“I’m in a lunge position,” Lambo told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times in December 2021. “Left leg forward, right leg back. . . . Urban Meyer, while I’m in that stretch position, comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Dipshit, make your fucking kicks!’ And kicks me in the leg. . . .
“It certainly wasn’t as hard as he could’ve done it, but it certainly wasn’t a love tap. Truthfully, I’d register it as a five [out of 10]. Which in the workplace, I don’t care if it’s football or not, the boss can’t strike an employee. And for a second, I couldn’t believe it actually happened. Pardon my vulgarity, I said, ‘Don’t you ever fucking kick me again!’ And his response was, ‘I’m the head ball coach, I’ll kick you whenever the fuck I want.’” (Meyer denied the allegations.)
The fact that Lambo, his snapper, and his holder were witnesses in the arbitration suggests that the kicking of the kicker became a key component of the case for firing Meyer “with cause.”
When the Jaguars fired Meyer, owner Shad Khan’s spokesman insisted that the decision was not sparked by Lambo’s claim coming to light, four months after the incident occurred. Once the Jaguars embarked on an effort to not pay the balance of Meyer’s contract, the reason for downplaying the connection between publication and termination became clear.
The Jaguars couldn’t credibly claim Meyer was fired “with cause” over the incident from August, because they knew about it at the time and took no action. They needed to point to a broader pattern of conduct that, in combination, satisfied the contractual definition of “cause.”
Then there’s the reality that the NFL’s arbitration process is rigged against the employee. Coaches have no choice but to sign contracts that include arbitration provisions giving the Commissioner full power over the process. (McMurphy writes that an “independent arbitrator” resolved Meyer’s claim — it would be stunning, to say the least, if a truly independent party resolved the arbitration. It’s more likely that the Commissioner exercised his prerogative to assign the case to someone who could be trusted to reach the right outcome for one of the people who pay the Commissioner’s salary.)
Frankly, Meyer could have considered challenging the entire arbitration process in court — and still could. In recent cases (Jon Gruden and Brian Flores), the NFL’s preferred system of being judge and jury for all employment claims has taken multiple body blows.
With more than $30 million riding on the outcome, it’s worth Meyer and his lawyers considering a full-blown attack on a process that does not call for a truly independent arbitrator. Then again, it may not matter.
Given Meyer’s various misadventures, if any coach ever satisfied the definition of being fired “with cause,” it’s him.
The NFL will be playing nine international games during the 2026 season and that number could go up to 11 for the 2027 season.
Per multiple reports, owners are expected to vote on adding two international games to next year’s slate at this week’s league meeting in Orlando.
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement limits the league to 10 international games a year, but there is an exception for teams that are unable to play at their regular home stadium. That will be the case for the Jaguars in 2027 as renovations to EverBank Stadium will render it usable to the team for home games. The Jags will play one game at Wembley Stadium and are set to use Camping World Stadium in Orlando as their temporary home field.
This year’s international games will take place in Melbourne, Rio, London, Madrid, Paris, Munich, and Mexico City.
