Jaguars Head Coach Confirms Biggest Offseason Concern

The glaring gap at left tackle remains the ultimate wildcard for the Jacksonville Jaguars as they grind through the thick of OTAs. 

Liam Coen doesn’t want to rush LT1 Cole Van Lanen until he’s 100%. Walker Little is navigating left tackle reps and trade rumors, all at once. And Coen will hardly take the risk of pushing young talents like Ricky Lee and rookie Garrett DiGiorgio into the trenches right off the bat, especially in high-pressure situations like the regular season. 

That leaves him with an option to either trade for a positional veteran or count on Van Lanen, which means playing a massive gamble. 

As of now, Coen seems to be leaning towards the latter since he’s strictly positioning Anton Harrison at right tackle.

"Yeah, we actually did talk about a little bit last week," Coen said, addressing Harrison getting any left tackle reps. "It's something that you don't want to mess with too much unless you're going to make it a change.”

Coen cites Detroit Lions offensive lineman Penei Sewell switching to left tackle as his new position for the long term.

"Specifically, I remember in the mock game we did it, and that was a little bit more to see how the guys would react and see what that would look like,” Coen said. “We absolutely will do that again, but just also trying to get them, it's OTA four, so we're just trying to get a little bit more of that continuity and chemistry back before doing that."

Coen explicitly stated that the staff has no intention to switch Harrison to the blindside, even when they need some serious help there.

Plus, Harrison has proven himself at the position since he mainly played left tackle with the Oklahoma Sooners in college, starting 23 games on the blindside compared to just one game on the right. 

However, ever since coming to Jacksonville in 2023, he has played right, and there haven’t been any serious discussions about changing them.  

Because Harrison has natural, high-level college experience at LT, it would be incredibly easy to just slide him over during Cole Van Lanen's injury.

The fact that Coen refuses to cross-train him there this summer proves they are actively protecting his development on the right side and fully expect Van Lanen to step back into the starting LT role.

It will be interesting to see how Coen takes it if his gamble blows up in his face.

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