Wisconsin Football: Cole Van Lanen Heads to NFL, Where Might He Go?

Cole Van Lanen is leaving the Wisconsin Football program to head to the NFL. Here is what one draft analyst has to say about his game and where he might end up.

Over the last few weeks, the Wisconsin Football program has received some good news with Jake Ferguson, Kendric Pryor, Jack Sanborn, and Faion Hicks all announcing that they will be back for the 2021 season. But as expected, left tackle Cole Van Lanen has recently decided to enter the 2021 NFL Draft.

Van Lanen is one of the more experienced players you will see entering the 2021 NFL Draft. During his four and a half year career as a Badger, Van Lanen appeared in 45 games and spent the last two seasons as a full-time starter.

He burst onto the scene in 2018, playing 570 snaps at left tackle and allowing only two sacks, six pressures, and was called for just one penalty. In fact, that season he was Pro Football Focus’ highest-graded tackle in the country.

In 2019, performance-wise we saw Van Lanen take a step back from 2018 as he fought through injuries for much of the season. When it was all said and done, he allowed five sacks, 15 pressures, and was flagged five times over 371 pass-blocking snaps. However, he still entered the 2020 season as PFF’s fourth-best returning lineman.

In a shortened season, Van Laned had just 181 pass-blocking reps and gave up one sack and three total pressures. His overall grade from PFF ranked 42nd out of 577 eligible offensive tackles.

Looking ahead to the draft, it is still very early and as always, a lot will change between now and then. As of now, The Draft Network has Van Lanen ranked as the 239th overall prospect and the 22nd rated tackle in this year’s class. For a closer look at Van Lanen’s game, here is what Kyle Crabbs had to say in his early pre-draft scouting report:

"“Pros: Van Lanen is an absolute load coming off the snap. He’s got natural power for days thanks to his foot drive and mass, once he’s able to create any level of forward push, he’s consistent in his efforts to continue to balloon the point of attack.He’s going to be a natural in the run game at the next level — I like his general mobility, he’s not the most graceful but generally speaking he’s effective in space to get the job done.”“Cons: He’s much more nimble when he’s working forward versus when he’s tasked with taking vertical sets. He’ll overextend himself a bit on quick sets open the door for defenders to force a missed punch and catch him leaning.There’s some visible stiffness in his hips, he’s got to really fight and scrap with the inside hand to prevent getting taken on inside counters when he’s working on an island against speedy rushers off the edge.”"

It’s difficult to gauge exactly where Van Lanen will be selected, but given his ranking over at The Draft Network, Day 3 seems to be a likely landing spot at this time. For another perspective, the Mock Draft Database, which keeps track of where players are being ranked as well as where they are being selected in mock drafts has Van Lanen as the 209th rated prospect currently and with a seventh-round projection. His peak ranking was 172.

A recent mock draft from NFL Mocks has Van Lanen being selected by the New York Jets in Round 5, while With the First Pick has him going to Miami in Round 6. According to The Draft Network, some other teams to keep your eyes on that could be looking for a tackle this April include Chicago, Dallas, Carolina, the Los Angeles Chargers, and Green Bay to name a few–although every team is interested in finding a quality tackle.

As I’ve already said, a lot is going to change between now and the draft as it always does and that holds true for Cole Van Lanen’s draft stock as well, which will undoubtedly fluctuate. But for the Wisconsin Football program, they’ll now have to replace their starting left tackle, who was a force as both a pass-blocker and a run-blocker. Fortunately, they’ll have a few good options to choose from.