JACKSONVILLE – This was a new day, a special day.
If Travis Hunter didn't know it upon waking Friday, the Jaguars' newest franchise-defining player absolutely knew it while flying to Jacksonville for the first day of the rest of his life.
This was a different kind of cool for a different kind of player.
"I normally go to sleep on planes, but I stayed up the whole time just looking out the window," he said.
Such was the mood around the Miller Electric Center Friday, with Hunter – the 2025 NFL Draft's most dynamic player and its best prospect – arriving in Jacksonville hours after the Jaguars surprised the NFL by trading up three spots to select him No. 2 overall.
This is more than the '25 draft’s biggest Day 1 story.
It's a story of a franchise's new direction.
"It's a statement for how we plan to move, who we are," Jaguars General Manager James Gladstone said.
That reiterated a '25 draft theme that moving boldly for Hunter is a tone-setting moment for the franchise's new decision-makers -- Gladstone, Head Coach Liam Coen and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Tony Boselli.
"What do I think about it?" Hunter said. "It was a great choice. I've just got to come and do my job. My job is to come out and be Travis Hunter -- come out and play how they envision me to play and exceed all the expectations."
Hunter, the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Colorado, in '24 became the only player ever to win the Bednarik Award for college football's best defensive player and the Biletnikoff Award for college football's best wide receiver.
"We know he's going to be able to do both," Coen said. "We feel that in our bones. We're going to set that up that way from a schedule, from an operations standpoint, the way that we're going to operate for him, to set him up to have the most success that he can, then help the Jacksonville Jaguars become the best version of ourselves."
Added Coen, "We want it to look like what it looked like at Colorado, and that would be pretty good for us."
The Jaguars traded four selections to the Cleveland Browns to obtain No. 2 overall: Nos. 5 (Round 1), 36 (Round 2) and 126 (Round 4) overall in '25 and a 2026 first-round selection, The Jaguars received the Nos. 104 (Round 4) and 200 (Round 6) selections in '25 in the trade.
"I've just got to go out there and prove them right," Hunter said. "It's definitely a lot of motivation. They sacrificed a lot to get me. That means they believe in me. That just validates that I need to go ahead and just do my job."
Added Hunter, "I'm going to come out and do my job. I'm not going to say I'm going to change anything. I don't want to set the expectation too high. I'm just going to come in and do my job, and hopefully we change the atmosphere."
Hunter, seated between Coen and Gladstone in a packed MEC team meeting room early Friday afternoon, spoke briefly of working with Jaguars wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. – a Pro Bowl selection as a rookie in 2024.
"He'll probably get annoyed because I'm going to ask so many questions," Hunter said, smiling. "I want to be the best. I want to be better than him. So I'm going to try to soak up all the knowledge that he allows me to take from him."
He spoke, too, of speaking with Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence Friday.
"He's just ready to work," Hunter said.
Hunter, too, discounted that being the nation's top high school recruit before being the draft's top prospect means football has come easily for him.
"I had to work to play both sides of the ball, even being with Coach Prime (Colorado Head Coach Deion Sanders)," he said. "You all just happened to see the perfect end, but I did a lot of work to get to where I'm at. So, I'm going to continue to put in the work, continue to grind, and I'm going to just continue to do what I do."
Gladstone, for his part, re-emphasized a theme he discussed Thursday – that Hunter is a special player who transcends position and who perhaps can transcend the sport. Gladstone on Friday discussed Hunter as embodiment of football's "capacity to ignite belief – belief in ourselves, belief in others, belief in achieving what many deem impossible."
"He's a rare person," Gladstone said. "He's a rare player. But he's also a reminder that the boundaries of the game of football we built to be challenged. We want him to be nothing more than him – because when he is, he elevates the space around him – from the football field, to the city, to the game of football itself.
"Travis Hunter is who we've been hunting up."
