JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville Jaguars proprietor Shad Khan is not involved that his normal supervisor and head coach are of their roles for the primary time.
He is enthusiastic about it.
Khan says he believes the hiring of 34-year-old GM James Gladstone to pair with 39-year-old head coach Liam Coen — who will work with first-time govt vice chairman of soccer operations Tony Boselli — will energize a franchise that has misplaced 10 or extra video games in 10 of Khan’s 13 seasons because the proprietor.
“We’ve nice folks and a terrific workforce of individuals, though they is likely to be within the place for the primary time,” Khan stated Monday throughout Gladstone’s introductory information convention. “I feel collectively they’ll have nice success. I feel we’re all conscious that they are new, however [they have] an enormous quantity of the potential to essentially develop into it.
“The brainpower, the bandwidth, the completely different expertise, are actually complementary. … This is not about, ‘Hey, I’ve acquired X years of expertise in one thing.’ Numerous occasions it seems to be one 12 months of expertise X occasions over. I simply assume the mind matter right here goes to be nice for the Jaguars.”
Gladstone is the newest piece of the puzzle. He involves Jacksonville after spending the previous 9 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, with the previous three because the workforce’s director of scouting technique. He joined the Rams in 2016 as senior assistant to GM Les Snead after working as a soccer coach and in varied administrative positions at two excessive faculties in St. Louis.
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With the Rams, Gladstone helped Snead in strategic planning and the execution of the workforce’s every day scouting processes. He additionally scouted gamers and labored on particular tasks.
Coen first grew to become an offensive coordinator on the College of Maine in 2016, and he adopted that with stops with the Rams (twice), College of Kentucky (twice), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a place coach and offensive coordinator.
Coen’s picks for offensive (Grant Udinski) and defensive (Anthony Campanile) coordinators are also in these roles for the primary time.
Gladstone and Coen do not see their ages — or inexperience — as such a giant deal. They each labored intently with Rams head coach Sean McVay, who was the youngest head coach in NFL historical past at 30 when the Rams employed him in 2017. McVay’s age or inexperience clearly hasn’t held him again or saved the Rams from having success.
“I do not know that we have really talked about our age in any respect,” Gladstone stated. “The attention-grabbing factor I do assume we each begin from a spot of humility, and I feel that that makes plenty of stuff simple and seamless. Whereas on the identical time there’s this aura of confidence and understanding that we’ve got a dynamic asset and that’s our potential to see what instruments can be found and apply and execute these inside our spheres.
“And so I do not know that age has ever been one thing that my thoughts’s ever gone to as part of this course of. And we actually have not even introduced up in any conversations.”
“I noticed this man utterly dominate that place. The power to speak with each scouting and the coaches was simply at such a unique stage than I used to be used to seeing.”
Coach Coen on watching GM James Gladstone spearhead UDFA signings throughout their shared time in LA. pic.twitter.com/1Xp4fhUADl
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) February 24, 2025
With Coen, discovering a technique to attain the gamers — no matter how outdated he’s — is a very powerful factor.
“It is a league the place you have got to have the ability to join with folks which can be popping out of school, proper?” Coen stated. “They’re popping out of school, they’re coming from an NIL panorama, from the switch portal panorama. This recreation is ever evolving and ever-changing as we have talked about. Can we join with the gamers?
“That to me is all that basically issues. Can the employees, the personnel division, Tony [Boselli], can all of us join with these gamers to have the ability to get one of the best product on the sphere?”
That has been the franchise’s largest drawback, even earlier than Khan bought the workforce from authentic proprietor Wayne Weaver in November 2011 for $770 million. Except for a four-year run from 1996 to 1999, the Jaguars have been capable of finding solely sporadic success. They’ve made the playoffs solely 4 occasions (2005, 2007, 2017, 2022) and have had back-to-back successful seasons solely twice since 1999.
Khan’s previous three teaching hires — Doug Marrone, City Meyer and Doug Pederson — had every been head coaches earlier than. Two had achieved huge success — Meyer received two nationwide titles at Florida and Pederson received a Tremendous Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles — however all three tenures with the Jaguars ended with nothing to indicate for it.
Khan has opted for a unique strategy this time and feels nice about it.
“Nicely, what a begin to 2025,” Khan stated. “I hope everyone seems to be as energized as I’m, as we intention on the shiny future on the sphere and proceed to succeed as we’ve got off the sphere.”
