Nah, I think it’s as simple as he’s an amazing player when the whole team is firing. If your team is dominating he will tear oppositions apart. As soon as any pressure is applied though and they need their half to build pressure, or play smart to grind out a win, he loses his mind.
That’s when he starts kicking the ball into shins, throwing stupid passes, kicking it dead, and bombing it too deep or far too shallow, and getting penalised/missing tackles in defence.
I think you've nailed it. I believe he is an amazing player. He's pulled off massive plays far too many times, in a vast variety of situations, to be considered simply average. The issue he has is that he pulls the trigger too often.
It's like he has all the skills, he even knows the plays for any given situation. It's just like he sucks at summing up all the variables. Like he has 9 out of the 10 parts set up, but doesn't realise that the one variable will kill the play. Or he simply decides he's going for it anyway.
The kick on the third being the perfect example. In Origin, it took a lot to get the pieces in play. The fullback was caught in the line after making a previous tackle. It was still the 3rd so the defence was up in the face of the runners, so there was no one back to field a kick. There was enough space between the defenders to get the kick through at the right angle. Unfortunately, either he never gestured to his runners that it was coming, or they thought it would come later. Regardless, he pulls the trigger, and it goes over the dead-ball line, throwing away two further attacking plays and giving NSW a 7-tackle set. Literally days later, he has the balls to do the exact same fucking thing, but this time that last variable - the kick-chasers - is in play. Pulls the trigger, wonderful try scored.
Can Hunt learn that last piece that'll push him from sporadically-amazing to elite? You'd think that if he could, he would have by now. Which makes me think that maybe it's not a maturity thing, or an experience thing, it's just an awareness that he simply does not possess. Would I take him back? For a price, for sure. But we did the right thing by not getting in to a bidding war.