Skip Bayless was once a decent talking head. Mind you, he was never more meaningful than that. He had opinions, and they were as valid as any Seattle Seahawks fan. The difference was that Bayless had a platform like ESPN to make him somewhat noticeable.
Pivoting to rookie wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, he didn't have a great game against the Seahawks in Week 6. He caught four of his seven targets as a receiver, but for only 15 yards. As a corner, he gave up two completions on four targets for 18 yards. He made two tackles.
He wasn't terrible against Seattle, but he also wasn't a reason the Jaguars lost the game. He was just meh, just as many rookies are meh a third of the way through their first seasons. Judging them too harshly is foolish and silly.
Don't ask Skip Bayless why Travis Hunter didn't succeed against the Seattle Seahawks
That goes double for Hunter, who is having to learn two difficult positions at once. Playing wide receiver is hard enough for any rookie, as is cornerback, but Hunter is being asked to do both. In year two and beyond, he will probably be great. His rookie season might be bumpy.
Skip Bayless, though, isn't about patience. He can't be. He gets paid a lot of money to spew opinions, whether they are factual or not. Or worse, if they aren't based on logic. The reason Travis Hunter didn't play well against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 6 had little to do with Mike Macdonald's team, per Bayless.
Instead, Hunter has already tuned out. He wanted to be, and was, baptized before the Jaguars and Seahawks game. Bayless clearly doesn't understand that football players are people, too. Also, he doesn't seem to know that most churches hold services on Sundays only, and why would Hunter feel so important to ask a church to hold a special service just for him?
Plus, just think how great a story it would have been for some had Hunter been baptized and then had a great game against Seattle? The timing of the whole thing was more of a coincidence than Travis Hunter didn't care about his own team.
The criticism was also unfair to the Seattle Seahawks, who managed not to allow Hunter to have a breakout game nor have him disrupt quarterback Sam Darnold and the offense. Bayless managed to aim a stone at two birds (OK, one team was a cat), and only hit himself.
The ESPN meaningless talking head posted a 28-minute diatribe on social media about Travis Hunter things, and said, in part, "(Hunter is) starting to check out mentally on the Jags, so he was actually happy to be baptized on a gameday morning, because football isn't taking that much concentration or focus or pregame mental preparation...It was just a stunning indication of where his head is at, or not at, right now. It's not really into football right now.'"
How ridiculous. Let's hope Skip Bayless doesn't catch Sam Darnold going to breakfast the morning of a game. He might suggest the quarterback is getting full because he doesn't want to spend much time digesting the playbook. Bayless is a fool, and it's time people stopped noticing him.