Just a few years ago, before transferring to Houston Christian, Jalyx Hunt was a safety at Cornell. Last year at this time, he was a talented but raw third-round edge rusher.
This year?
The 24-year-old returns for Year 2 with the Eagles after an encouraging rookie season with an understanding of how to reach his extremely high ceiling.
“I’m way more comfortable, man,” Hunt said at OTAs this week. “Last year, it was all coming at you fast. You just try to keep your head, play your role. Now, I feel as if I can understand the game a lot more, I can play within the player that I am and have a little bit more personality out there instead of being so cookie-cutter. I’m excited about that.”
The Eagles drafted Hunt with the No. 94 overall pick last April and many thought he was destined for a redshirt season as a raw developmental prospect. He was even a healthy scratch for the Eagles’ Week 1 game in São Paulo, Brazil. But then he started to get better and better and by the time the playoffs came, Hunt was a vital part of the Eagles’ edge rusher rotation.
After having 1 1/2 sacks in 16 regular season games, Hunt had another 1 1/2 sacks in the playoffs. And after having just 9 pressures in the regular season, he had 8 in the playoffs. His 12.9% pressure rate in the playoffs was way higher than his pressure rate of 7.4% in the regular season.
Hunt was a completely different player in Super Bowl LIX than he was in Week 2.
But Hunt’s rookie season just barely scratched the surface of his potential as an NFL edge rusher. And as he enters Year 2, Hunt seems to have a great understanding of what it’ll take to reach that full potential.
“This offseason I just know a lot more of what is expected of me and what to expect from tackles and different players across the league,” Hunt said. “I just know a lot more and I’ve been able to approach my game in a more professional way by figuring out what moves I want to work on, who I should watch, what I should watch.
“Being a lot more technical because that’s the biggest difference I’ve seen is that players who are elite and good, your technicality levels are on completely different levels. If I want to be great at this position and in this league, I gotta be technical. That’s what I’ve really been focusing on and that’s what I think has really changed between last year and this year.”
It’s easy to see why the Eagles were interested in Hunt during last year’s draft. He didn’t have a ton of experience as an edge rusher but had the body makeup and the athleticism to be a really intriguing prospect.
But once you get to the NFL, you’re probably not going to win a ton on athleticism alone. That was something Hunt figured out pretty early on going up against Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata — one of the best pairs of offensive tackles in the league — in practice.
“When you are a rookie learning the position and you’re going against Lane Johnson and you don’t even get within like four yards of the quarterback every rep,” Hunt said, “you’ve got to figure something out.”
Johnson and Mailata were happy to share tips with Hunt and the then-rookie was happy to take them. He also worked a ton with edge rusher coach Jeremiah Washburn, as well as the Eagles’ developmental team, which includes Connor Barwin and Matt Leo. From the moment Hunt arrived in Philly, he was eager to learn and improve.
The difference as he enters Year 2 is that Hunt now better understands how to concentrate those efforts.
“It started last year when I learned that your bag and your plan is different depending on what side you’re on, which tackle you’re going against, your history with that tackle, the history they have with different moves,” Hunt said.
“Right now I’m just developing my bag, developing everything. When it gets into the season, being able to sit down and watch a specific tackle, seeing what he got beat with, seeing what he doesn’t get beat on, how he plays, what he likes to do, what he doesn’t like to do, what rushers like to do against him, that all comes into play when it turns into your plan and what you want to utilize when you go against him.”
The Eagles’ edge rusher room looks different in 2025 without Brandon Graham and Josh Sweat. Hunt figures to be a bigger part of their rotation and has a good chance to be a starter opposite Nolan Smith, who returns for Year 3.
On Wednesday, Hunt was asked a question about newcomer free agent pickups Azeez Ojulari and Josh Uche and had the same compliment about both of them: They love pass rushing.
In fact, everyone in that room does. Hunt is still relatively new at the position but he’s working at it every day.
“We sit down in the room and just talk about pass rush,” Hunt said. “We’ll be in the locker room, talking about what moves to hit, why they like this move, what develops off this move. Just because we love what we do.”
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