Big Cat Country
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on Jacksonville Jaguars offensive lineman Cole Van Lanen, who has become one of those rare players who can line up just about anywhere and make things better.
If you’ve watched “Sons of Anarchy,” Kurt Sutter’s outstanding biker drama series (and if you haven’t, I HIGHLY recommend it), you know why none of the guys in SAMCRO ever wanted to go Nomad. For bikers, Nomad meant that they had no home, no home charter, and no brothers to protect them on a day-to-day basis. They were roaming the earth without connection.
It’s entirely possible that the NFL’s version of a Nomad is the offensive lineman who is required to flip positions multiple times in a season. In these cases, continuity is obviously upset, assignments and responsibilities change at lightning speed, and if you fall apart, you’re falling apart all over the place. As much as the truly great offensive linemen are highly regarded for their ability to dominate at one or two positions, those linemen who can move from spot to spot in the blink of an eye are coveted by their teammates and coaches, even when the general public doesn’t know their names.
Cole Van Lanen of the Jaguars has become perhaps the NFL’s ultimate Nomad. Selected in the sixth round of the 2021 draft by the Green Bay Packers out of Wisconsin, Van Lanen barely played for his first NFL team in his rookie year, with a grand total of one regular-season snap. The Packers signed him to a reserve/future contract in January, 2022, but then traded him to the Jags in August, 2022 for a seventh-round draft pick in 2023.
Van Lanen was also a bit player with the Jags in 2022 and 2023, totaling 71 snaps at right guard and right tackle. It wasn’t until 2024 that he became more of an integral part of the offense, with 252 total snaps — 187 at left tackle, 60 at right tackle, and five as the sixth offensive lineman in the team’s jumbo packages. Overall, he allowed one sack and nine total pressures.
More importantly, in the transition from Doug Pederson to Liam Coen, Van Lanen impressed enough people in the building for the new staff to give him more reps. Van Lanen struggled with a shoulder issue in the preseason, but Coen had already seen enough to keep an eye on the guy.
“Yeah, Cole, I think it’s usually when an O-lineman isn’t getting noticed all that much, they’re doing a good job,” Coen said on Sept. 5. “I don’t want to say he’s the definition of that, but that kind of happens with him where it’s just he does his job and he does his job above average. So, you’re like, man, this guy can step in and be able to help us...
