Gladstone Glad Snead Approached Him With Simple Message: ‘It’s Time’

New Jaguars general manager says Snead changed trajectory of his life

Jacksonville Jaguars Head Coach Liam Coen, left, Owner Shad Khan, second from left, new General Manager James Gladstone, second from right and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Tony Boselli, right, pose for a picture during a press conference Monday morning February 24, 2025 at the Miller Electric Center in Jacksonville, Fla. [Doug Engle/Florida Times-Union]2025 / Doug Engle/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Les Snead was general manager of the St. Louis Rams when he met with his son’s student activities director at a Starbucks in June of 2016.

And on a Saturday morning over caffeine and Arabica, James Gladstone’s NFL journey began. Eight years and eight months later, the Jacksonville Jaguars introduced the 34-year-old as the NFL’s youngest general manager.

“To the Los Angeles Rams,” Gladstone said Monday, “to everyone I worked with over the last nine years, thank you. I genuinely believe that this moment, me being seated on this stage, is not a reflection of anything that I've done on my own but rather a collective effort, and I won't lose sight of it.”

Never looking down at notes, Gladstone said the Rams altered the trajectory of his life, not only his career but his mindset. He also provided a glimpse into the culture Snead has established with head coach Sean McVay.

“Les is unapologetically himself,” Gladstone said. “He offers that same luxury to anybody he comes in contact with, and that is something that I think is one of the best things on Planet Earth, to simply be able to be yourself. That's what drew me to him.

“Even though I was pursuing a career as a high school teacher and football coach, one that I really wanted to embark on from a young age, and pivoted to a different path simply for the sake that I could find somebody that I wanted to learn from and support.”

Pivoting to a different path is something Gladstone helped the Rams accomplish seamlessly in 2022, when they shifted from a free-agent focused strategy to a draft-and-develop paradigm. Three years later, thanks largely to Gladstone, the Rams brandish one of the league’s best young rosters.

Another roster in that category is the Lions, who unsurprisingly also have a former Snead lieutenant as general manager, Brad Holmes. And supporting Snead in the Rams’ front office means trusting him to communicate when the timing is right to push candidates out of the nest.

“It's been a fantastic nine years,” Gladstone said, “being able to be alongside him for that journey and really building the L.A. Rams into what they are today. As we transition then into this conversation around, ‘Hey, is it now time for us to consider what comes next?,’  it was never going to be something that I brought up. It was only until he raised his hand and said, ‘It's time.’”

And now that Gladstone’s time has come, the Rams will need to replace the empty office formerly occupied by their director of scouting strategy. The good news is Jacksonville got a late start on its GM search, so the Rams’ pre-combine work is complete.

The bad news is that finding someone who provided as much innovative intelligence, out-of-the-box strategy and ability to identify "intangibly rich" players, as Gladstone said Monday, will be a near-impossible task.

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