For the past few weeks, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ offensive line has been playing at a near-dominant level, culminating on Sunday with a zero-sack, no quarterback hits surrendered performance against the Indianapolis Colts. Local media and many within the fanbase have been clamoring for a new starting left tackle based on recent play by swing tackle Cole Van-Lanen. Van-Lanen finally stepped in for starting left tackle Walker Little during the team’s week 13 matchup against the Tennessee Titans after
Little exited the game in the second quarter with concussion symptoms that would also keep him out of the team’s week 14 victory. In Little’s absence, Van-Lanen played well. He played so well that coach Liam Coen, when asked if Cole had done enough to earn a starting role, stated:
“I think so. I think there’s definitely—he’s played enough really good football for us. We’ve got a great situation right now where you’ve got depth at multiple positions of people that have had to play for us a lot. This shows up in multiple positions all throughout the team. You can point to the defensive side of that for things, receiver position, a lot of different positions that guys have been fortunate enough to step up, play well, help lead us to get to where we are right now. And the message in the locker room is, ‘Hey guys, there’s a lot of guys that are coming back right now, and for us to continue to go where we want to go, we’ve got to use that as an edge,’ and that depth and experience that we’ve gotten has to be collective and having a team first mindset about everything we do.”
While Coen stopped short of declaring any depth-chart changes in his praise for CVL and others, the somewhat valid inquiry remains – has Cole Van-Lanen done enough to hold off Walker Little at left tackle in his limited stint there?
From the media and fanbase point of view, the answer is an obvious, ‘yes!’ Walker Little has struggled in pass protection in multiple high-leverage junctures against some of the top competition the Jaguars have faced this season. However, every time a depth player has performed well, the fanbase has been vocal that the incumbent should be benched. This has happened on numerous occasions in 2025 with even smaller sample sizes than Van-Lanen’s one-and-a-half-game audition (for example: Patrick Mekari and Cole Van-Lanen/Wyatt Milum, Dewey and Antonio Johnson, Matt Dickerson and Maason Smith, and even earlier in the year with Brian Thomas Jr and Parker Washington). Fanbases and media can be fickle; I mean, you can’t be a fan without being fanatic, right?
However, recency bias can often result in incomplete or flawed evaluations. For instance, Walker Little has arguably played pretty comparable to Van-Lanen, when considering the opposition faced, since the Jaguars’ bye week.
Van-Lanen, however, graded out as Pro Football Focus’ fourth-highest rated player on the Jaguars’ offense on Sunday (77.5) and the second-best offensive lineman behind only Ezra Cleveland (78.6). This followed his week 13 performance, where he was PFF’s third-highest rated offensive player against the Tennessee Titans, while playing both right guard and left tackle. Notably, since the bye week, Walker has consistently rated as the offense’s sixth to ninth best player for weeks 9, 11, 12, and 13 before exiting with concussion symptoms. Week ten was the Houston Texans’ matchup, where both Van-Lanen and Little struggled heavily at right guard and left tackle, landing each at the 14th and 18th ratings for the Jacksonville offense for that week. Little has consistently been regarded as a dominant run blocker, while struggling in the pass protection arena against top competition.
It would seem that Little’s early pass protection issues have so damaged fan and media confidence in him to a point where they’re willing to, understandably, attempt a switch due to the potential promise of upside. It’s a difficult decision, with not a lot to go on. Desperation can breed innovation, but it can also breed gullibility, and locating the truth can be tough.
From my conversations with many in the fanbase, two camps of opinions exist:
Group one includes those who believe that Walker Little isn’t elite, but he’s objectively the best option the Jaguars have in 2025.
Group two is made up of those with the thought process, “why not give Cole Van-Lanen a shot to see if he’s a better long-term option than Walker Little?” Many players on this roster, in 2025, with new coaching and a new scheme, have shown new sides of themselves that fans hadn’t previously seen (Devin Lloyd, Antonio Johnson, Montaric Brown, Dennis Gardeck, etc). Van-Lanen could be another in that growing list of developing players.
I don’t really have a strong personal opinion to date with such a small sample size, as this one feels impossible to grade when you also consider that Van-Lanen was injured throughout most of training camp, when any real competition for the role would have taken place.
Which camp do you fall into, BigCatCountry? Should the team go with the known product that has been playing better since the bye week or stay with the lesser-known product, which could possess a potentially high ceiling? He’s performed well, albeit against lesser competition than what Walker faced at left tackle. Tough choices, Duval…
Let us know in the comments and take our survey with your preference!
