According to John Shipley of Sports Illustrated on Tuesday, the Jacksonville Jaguars have officially announced the hiring of James Gladstone as their new general manager. Gladstone comes to the Jaguars after spending the last decade with the Los Angeles Rams.
Gladstone is only 34 years of age, and is the youngest general manager in the National Football League at the moment. While with the Rams, he was their senior assistant to their general manager, their player personnel coordinator, their director of scouting strategy, and their director of scouting. Gladstone won a Super Bowl in 2022. At that time, Gladstone was in charge of scouting for Los Angeles.
The Jaguars are one of two NFL franchises that did something different in the offseason. They hired a new head coach before a new general manager. The other franchise was the New York Jets. Normally when teams have a general manager and head coaching vacancy, it is the general manager’s choice on who the new head coach would be. However, in this case the Jaguars and Jets did things backwards. Jacksonville named Liam Cohen as their new head coach on January 24, over a month before a general manager was named. Meanwhile, the Jets hired their new head coach Aaron Glenn on January 22, three days before naming Darren Mougey as their new general manager on January 25.
Jacksonvville has a young group of players led by former first overall pick Trevor Lawrence. The focus for the Jaguars at this time is to prevent points being scored. This past season, they gave up 435 points. That was the second most points allowed in the American Football Conference. The only team in the AFC that gave up more were the Tennessee Titans at 460 points.
