The NFL's Tuesday was about two young players and the weight of being the reason anyone watches their team. In Jacksonville, the argument is Travis Hunter's usage. In New England, it's Drake Maye's start to 2026. Neither question has a clean answer, which is exactly why both keep getting asked.
Hunter was the second overall pick in the 2025 draft, taken as a cornerback and a receiver, and the questions about whether Jacksonville is getting the most out of him have persisted. They'll keep persisting. A player who plays both ways in a league engineered for specialization will always look underused somewhere, because every snap he spends on one side is a snap he isn't spending on the other. The Jaguars either commit to the two-way role completely or pick a side and live with it. The hedged middle gives you a tired player and no answer at either position, which is the worst version of the experiment.
Liam Coen's response was "He cares about winning." True, and not what anyone asked. Coaches reach for character when the honest answer to a usage question would require them to explain a plan that isn't working, and Coen isn't going to stand at a podium and detail why the second pick of a draft is doing less than expected. He may also believe the current split is correct. Either way, the role is his to define. If Hunter's usage stays muddled through the fall, that's a coaching failure, not a player one, and I'll say so plainly.
In Foxborough, the support came from an unexpected direction. Robert Spillane, a Patriots linebacker, backed Maye amid the quarterback's early 2026 struggles, saying Maye puts all that weight on himself. That quote is doing real work. A defender spending his media time talking up the struggling quarterback is a locker room picking a side, and it's the side that matters. Defensive players can smell a quarterback controversy forming, and Spillane just made clear which outcome he wants.
None of it throws a pass. Maye's start has been disappointing, and no amount of teammate backing changes a depth chart or a game plan. What it can change is how a young quarterback carries a bad month, which is the difference between a slump and a lost season. Maye has the harder job and, at least publicly, the more unified team behind him.
If you're ranking which of these gets fixed first, take Maye. His problem belongs to him, and the people around him are acting like it. Hunter's problem belongs to a staff that still hasn't decided what it wants him to be, and that's the one that tends to linger.
