Sports

Deion Sanders Is Putting Liam Coen On Blast For Lying About Travis Hunter’s Practice At Colorado

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Travis Hunter Practice Schedule Offense Defense
© Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Travis Hunter played on both offense and defense in practice during his two-year college football career at Colorado. Liam Coen is misinformed.

The first-year head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars continues to lie about the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.

To be fair, I do not think Coen means to be spreading untrue information about his star player’s college football career. I just don’t understand why nobody has informed him directly of the truth.

Travis Hunter plays on both sides of the ball.

Hunter originally committed to play defensive back at Florida State University. He was going to be a corner and only a corner in Tallahassee.

However, the No. 1 recruit in the country sent shockwaves across college football and flipped his commitment to Jackson State at the last second to play for Deion Sanders.

Sanders allowed Hunter to play both ways. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound unicorn caught 18 passes for 190 yards and four touchdowns with 19 total tackles, four pass deflections and two interceptions as a freshman with the Tigers. He later recorded 153 catches for ~2,000 yards and 15 touchdowns with 66 total tackles, 16 pass deflections and seven interceptions in two years at Colorado.

Nobody in college football history (at least in the modern era) did what Hunter did in Boulder. Rarely did he come off of the field. His snap counts rarely finished below 100 per game.

Thus, it was a big conversation when he was drafted by the Jaguars at No. 2 overall. Where was Travis Hunter going to play?

Liam Coen is wrong.

The first few games of Hunter’s professional career saw him play mostly on defense. Those numbers have since evened out and actually swung in the opposite direction over the weekend.

Hunter played 39 snaps on offense and 25 snaps on defense against the Kansas City Chiefs. His totals for the year now look like this:

  • Wide receiver (offense): 159 snaps, 108 pass play snaps
  • Cornerback (defense): 101 snaps, 74 coverage snaps

Pretty impressive!

As cool as it is to see Travis Hunter ball out on both offense and defense, there is one ongoing narrative that must be debunked. He practiced both positions equally at Colorado. More or less.

It started with Eli Manning on Monday night, who only repeated what Liam Coen said. Hunter supposedly did not practice on offense with the Buffaloes so he would just go out and wing it.

That is not true. Deion Sanders set the record straight during a press conference on Tuesday.

“That was a lie,” he said. “Travis Hunter played offense and defense. We started out with the ones on offense going for the first four or five reps, then he went over and played defense the next four or five reps, and he did it the whole practice.”

Deion Sanders Jr. echoed his dad’s sentiment.

“Don’t let them lie to you Mr Manning, he practiced Wr & DB equally,” Bucky said.

And yet, Coen doubled down on the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday to say Hunter did not practice nearly as much on offense as he did on defense.

That is also untrue.

Documented video evidence shows the first time Hunter played cornerback at Colorado from April 13, 2023. He took just one snap on defense before he went back to the offense.

There are very few programs in college football with the amount of access to media as Colorado. The archive of Hunter’s practice reps is deep. For Coen (and Manning by default) to share this kind of information as gospel is super weird. The two-way superstar practiced both ways all year!