Colorado Buffaloes football coach Deion Sanders is not happy about the Jacksonville Jaguars not giving him a call about how to use last year’s No. 2 draft pick, Travis Hunter, who the franchise traded a hefty haul to get.
Coach Prime, of course, raised Hunter from a star freshman on the FCS/HBCU Jackson State Tigers in 2022 before turning him into a Heisman winner in 2024 with the Buffs. As Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio explained, Liam Coen and his coaching staff are doing themselves a disservice by not talking to Sanders about how to turn the former two-way star at Colorado into a passable receiver and corner in the pros.
“Deion clearly knew how to get the best out of Hunter, because Deion did. Even if the Jaguars decided to do things their own way, it’s useful to know what Deion did and how Deion did it in order to devise a specific strategy for managing a player in whom the Jaguars made a very significant investment of draft-pick capital to move up three spots last year, from No. 5 to No. 2,” Florio wrote.
Unfortunately, there’s a very simple reason why Coen and Co. aren’t consulting with Sanders. Coach Prime wouldn’t like the reason…
Deion Sanders will never escape ‘Daddy Ball’ allegations at Colorado
The Jaguars may not see how Sanders treated Hunter as worth hearing about, since the NFL is a much different beast than Big 12 football. Now, it is to their detriment to do this, since Coach Prime’s practice schedule for Hunter was a big reason he had the durability to average around 130 snaps per game during his Heisman season.
Still, the “Daddy Ball” allegations were so strong during the 2023 and 2024 seasons that Sanders may simply not be trusted. Again, Jacksonville suffers from this way of thinking, but it is what it is.
With Shedeur Sanders, Coach Prime can meet Todd Monken and not have much power over the Cleveland Browns organization. Sanders was a fifth-round pick who many expect to lose the starting spot to Deshaun Watson this season, namely, the Plain Dealer’s Mary Kay Cabot, which erupted the controversy of Shilo telling her to “Go Make a Sandwich” instead of having an alleged agenda against Shedeur, and most expect to be fully replaced in the 2027 NFL draft. Shedeur could truthfully be cut at any time.
Hunter, though, is a long-term piece that the Jags paid a premium for. Enlisting Coach Prime can open up a can of worms that Coen and Co. would rather avoid and just handle the Hunter issue themselves.