2021 NFL mock draft: Jacksonville Jaguars select Walker Little

The Jacksonville Jaguars won’t have long to celebrate the selection of Trevor Lawrence with the first overall pick. The Jags have 10 picks in this year’s draft, including two firsts and a two seconds.

So on Thursday night, Lawrence will be the main course, but they’ll also have their choice of dessert near the end of the night with the 25th pick in the draft. That’s great news for Pride of Detroit commenter ejpenland, who is the acting general manager for the Jaguars in the POD Community Mock Draft.

Mr. penland has already given us his first pick, and you can read his reasoning for landing Lawrence here, but now the choice is far more difficult. To see the board thus far, check out our POD Community Mock Draft tracker here.

Here’s ejpenland with the pick:

With the 25th pick in the Pride of Detroit Community Mock Draft the Jacksonville Jaguars select OT Walker Little out of Stanford.

Walker Little is anything but little. He is a behemoth of a man, measuring in at 6-foot-7 and weighing 309 pounds. He has been a man among boys going all the way back to his days of being a starter on his high school veteran team... as a freshman. He was a four-year starter, leading his team as a captain, and team MVP in 2016 leading to him becoming an All-American and a five-star recruit. Out of high school, Little was a highly recruited prospect and was the top rated tackle, not only in his home state of Texas, but in the entire country.

At Stanford, Little became a true freshman starter at left tackle. Little started 21 games for Stanford at left tackle in his first two seasons, showing all the tools to be an elite pass blocker and an eventual left tackle playing, and starting, on Sundays. Unfortunately, that’s where things took a turn for Little. In the 2019 season opener he suffered a season-ending knee injury and then decided to opt out of the 2020 season because of the COVID pandemic.

So, with two years away from football there is a bit of rust that would need to be worked out, but if he can live up to the potential he showed in high school and his first two years in college this could be an excellent pick. He fills an immediate need protecting Trevor Lawrence’s blind side and is ranked the fourth-best tackle according to PFF and the 26th overall prospect, so the value is right for this spot.

Erik Schlitt’s thoughts:

PFF is very high on Little as a prospect, but for more clarity, let’s look at where some of the other draft experts rank him. He doesn’t crack NFL Network Daniel Jeremiah’s Top-50, checks in at No. 59 on The Athletic’s Dan Brugler’s board, lands at No. 89 on NFL.com Lance Zierlein’s board, and the fellas over at Draft Network have him at the 174th best prospect in the class.

That’s as wide a discrepancy in rankings as I have seen in this draft class and it’s most likely because—as ejpenland pointed out—he hasn’t seen the field in two years.

I understand the desire to want to add an offensive tackle in this class to protect Lawrence, but the Jaguars just franchise tagged Cam Robinson to hold down the left tackle position, which would conflict with Little, who has only played on the left side. So, if adding a tackle was a must have, I would have went with Teven Jenkins (Oklahoma State), who is the highest rated tackle on my board. Jenkins is also a natural right tackle and could be an option if the Jaguars wanted to upgrade 2019 second-round pick Jawaan Taylor.