For a moment at his first league meeting this spring, James Gladstone acted his age.

The 34-year-old general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars, hired in February as the second-youngest GM in NFL history and the subject of headlines regarding his baby-faced appearance, ran into longtime mentor and former boss Les Snead in the hallway between committee meetings. The pair had spoken on the phone frequently after Gladstone accepted the Jaguars job but had not seen each other since the previous training camp because Snead, the Los Angeles Rams GM, has most of his personnel department work remotely.

Snead held out his fist for a bump, but Gladstone laughed and wrapped the older man in a hug. They never hugged in their nine years working together, Gladstone said. He beamed as Snead fought to control his expression — a mixture of pride and amusement at the strangeness of meeting his protege as a peer.

Gladstone will be the face of the first Jaguars’ draft of a new era after years spent directing the Rams’ draft operation from behind the scenes. To some, his rise feels meteoric. To those who best know him, his new position feels like a given, the completion of a full-circle journey.

“You want to maybe politically correctly go, ‘Time will tell if he’s ready,” said Snead. “But there’s this element where you just want to scream, ‘Isn’t it blatantly obvious he’s ready, that he just oozes ready?'”

Snead’s first NFL job came as a pro scout for the then-expansion Jaguars in 1995. About 20 years later, he met Gladstone when the former teacher, assistant football coach and student activities director ran a parent event for Snead’s son, Logan, at Clayton High School in St. Louis in 2015. Snead and his wife, Kara, found Gladstone to be curious, organized (in ways Snead was not) and football-crazy (in ways Snead was). He offered Gladstone a job.

The job was eventually titled “senior assistant to the GM,” but it didn’t really exist. Not one to dwell on technicalities or infrastructure, Snead left the details up to Gladstone as the Rams transitioned from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 2016.

“It was, ‘Wow, that’s a bright human being. You wanna do some football?'” Snead said.

Gladstone knew he always wanted to be in football (locally, some believed Clayton was preparing Gladstone to eventually take over as head football coach from his father, Gene), but he had never considered the NFL. Some of Gladstone’s early tasks weren’t glamorous. Snead was addicted to Starbucks green tea, and Gladstone had to make sure the fridge in Snead’s office always had a cold one sitting inside.

But he got to be around football — and in an organization undergoing catalytic change. He watched quietly, curiously. He never forgot a detail about someone. He started anticipating the needs of people in the building beyond Snead.

The Rams’ coaching and personnel departments were sometimes at odds under then-head coach Jeff Fisher, who was fired in 2016. When L.A. hired the 30-year-old Sean McVay to replace Fisher in 2017, rebuilding the partnership between the two sides of the organization was a priority for Snead.

Snead does not emote often. He is quick to ask questions, or to argue about process and protocol, but rarely shares his own opinion. He is slow to praise and prefers to study how people act in the absence of it. He sometimes communicates words and phrases in ways he believes they should sound, not what they actually are (these are known as “Les-isms” in the Rams’ building).

Gladstone had a knack for translating Snead to the uninitiated and unpracticed.

“He was able to be my voice, I call it, in unscripted (and) unscheduled moments across the building,” said Snead. “Maybe help solve a problem, help engineer alignment or help just communicate clearly. … Everyone in the building would come to me and go, ‘Man, that dude. … He’s such a good communicator, and he doesn’t use the proximity to you as a weapon.'”

Gladstone, who became the Rams’ director of scouting strategy starting in 2022, thought of his role as playing point guard. “I’ve probably naturally been a facilitator in some ways without ever wanting to be the focus,” he said. “To give other people ‘ops’ — to get them open, give them good looks — then let them be the one to shoot the ball.”

His knack for talent evaluation started to stand out to other scouts and coaches, especially the wildly energetic McVay, who often joked with Snead about bringing Gladstone over to the coaching staff.

“He has a great feel for the game,” McVay said. “He was about really trying to see the game through the same lens as us as coaches, while also being honest about his opinions. … There’s this calm demeanor. There’s this clarity at which he communicates. He’s able to connect.”

The draft is still an unsolvable puzzle, and some of the results depend on luck. Gladstone’s strength over time became creating enough strategy within the Rams’ operations that luck didn’t have to equate to unpredictability. Snead grew comfortable staying in the background of draft meetings where he could observe scouts’ arguments and research. Gladstone took the lead. He, current Rams scouting strategy director Nicole Blake and analytics head Jake Temme built out surveys that scouts could privately fill out about prospects in tandem with the layers of analysis they inputted into JAARS, the Rams’ in-house data and information processing system.

Gladstone mapped out conversations based on the data he collected: Did an introverted scout feel especially passionate about a prospect? Gladstone found ways to elevate that scout’s voice where he’d otherwise be happy under the radar. Did Gladstone catch an especially cogent point in a note buried in JAARS? He’d take a moment to highlight it when it would resonate during position group arguments. Armed with new information late in an evaluation, he’d flag an old concern that flared up early in the process so the group could re-litigate.

“He’s coded to communicate really, really well,” Snead said. “But then there’s the intentionality behind the communication which has probably made him rare, unique.”

In 2024, future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald retired. The Rams’ scouting and coaching staffs went through an exercise that April after the bulk of their prospect evaluations was complete, debating different pairings of outside linebackers and interior defensive linemen they might select with their first two picks. Gladstone and some other scouts were high on the idea of keeping Florida State teammates Jared Verse and Braden Fiske together because of their already developed chemistry, but they wanted the coaches to arrive at the conclusion separately.

As debates closed, Gladstone distributed a survey created by himself, Blake and Temme nicknamed “Make him a Ram.” The aim was to discover who each evaluator would most like to draft based on character, traits, athleticism, medical information and more. Answers stayed anonymous.

Verse and Fiske emerged both individually and as the top linebacker/lineman pairing. After a failed attempt to trade into the top 10 for tight end Brock Bowers before the first round began, Gladstone, Snead and McVay moved to the tandem strategy. Both Verse (pick No. 19) and Fiske (pick No. 39) were finalists for the Defensive Rookie of the Year award, which Verse won.

As years passed and they built, tore down and rebuilt the Rams’ scouting and draft processes together, Snead and Gladstone grew close, as did their families. Gladstone and his wife, Julie, gave their first daughter Snead’s given name (Samuel) as a middle name.

“We wanted to raise her in his likeness,” Gladstone said.

For a long time, Gladstone believed he’d continue in his role and ultimately walk into the sunset after Snead when he retired. Privately, others around Gladstone knew his competitiveness and obsession with team-building would get the better of him if the right opportunity emerged. For Gladstone, it would have to be right with Snead.

“I’ve always been someone who tried to root themselves in whatever they are doing as best they can, with the assumption that is what ultimately will produce the right results,” Gladstone said.

When the Jacksonville job came up this offseason, Snead knew, not without sadness, that it was time. The feeling struck him as he spoke on Gladstone’s behalf with Jaguars executive vice president Tony Boselli — the team’s first ever draft choice who, like Snead, entered the NFL with Jacksonville in 1995.

“It’s a real special, sentimental something,” Snead said, calling Gladstone’s departure “sweetbitter,” a classic Les-ism. He felt the sweet before the bitter.

Snead and a handful of other Rams executives watched Gladstone’s introductory news conference together in one of their offices shortly after Jacksonville announced the hire. Clean-shaven and wearing a teal suit, Gladstone looked about 26. He didn’t sound it. As Gladstone thanked the important people in his life, he paused to gather himself.

“To Les and Kara Snead,” he said, waving his palm in the air as his voice broke with emotion. “You guys altered the trajectory of my life. Supporting you, learning from you, you know, that was an honor of a lifetime.”

Snead’s sudden tears surprised even himself.

The two are very alike after their decade together. How could they not be? Gladstone learned the NFL in nearly a decade spent alongside Snead, and much about life and parenting and balance (and lack thereof) along the way. He competed with Snead as they grew from boss and assistant into trusted collaborators.

If Snead arrived at the office at 7:30 a.m., Gladstone somehow had already clocked in and gotten the personnel staff organized for the day. Staffers noted that somehow Snead’s office whiteboard was always updated with the most relevant information needed for meetings that week, plus a note or two that would lead the GM into a new avenue of discussion with scouts.

When Gladstone and others in the scouting department began working remotely for most of the season a few years ago, he continued to set the pace of the group. One high-ranking Rams staffer described his workflow as “relentless, disciplined, no bulls— without being combative.” The only time anybody in the organization saw Gladstone get angry was when the group tried to cut a Sunday pre-draft meeting short to watch a golf tournament.

In Jacksonville, Gladstone will operate like Snead in some ways, especially in the draft. This year, the Jaguars have 10 picks — “for now,” Gladstone joked, sounding like the trade-happy Snead. Just like Snead, Gladstone will use a “call sheet” — a condensed version of JAARS spread across multiple screens in the draft room that organizes prospects by round — for draft strategy. Its layout, and the manner in which it is navigated, is similar to how McVay uses his playcall sheet for games, sequencing and grouping together different plays based on how a game is unfolding.

Like a coach calling a series, Gladstone will be able to navigate scenarios based on how the 31 other teams pick and what he knows of their tendencies. This method gives him a lot of information and flexibility — and the structure of a call sheet resonates with the coaches who will be in the draft room with him.

“He breaks things down to such an elite level of simplicity for me because he’s a lot smarter than I am,” said new Jaguars head coach Liam Coen, who worked in L.A. as a position coach from 2018-2020 and as offensive coordinator in 2022. “Not your typical draft board, it’s easier for me to read and understand, which is kind of cool. He’s a coach’s kid!”

The digital information system used by the Jaguars’ scouting department is called Blackwater. Gladstone hired Temme out of L.A. as Jacksonville’s new vice president of football analytics in March, and just as the two helped develop JAARS into its current form, they will do the same with Blackwater, building out scout surveys and other analytics programs.

Gladstone and Snead developed alternative methods for gathering intel on prospects prior to the draft. Instead of hosting “30 visits,” or attending en masse all-star events like the Senior Bowl or scouting combine in the spring, the Rams send specific employees to spend a day with players of interest at their college or in their hometown. As long as the visits are within a 50-mile radius of either site, they don’t have to be reported to the league and often don’t leak.

Keeping their interest in prospects private was strategically important, but it was even more crucial for Gladstone and Snead to get players to break down plays and teach their scheme in their own environments instead of the truncated interview periods at pre-draft events or the job interview-style 30 visits. Select scouts go to the all-star events to distribute a personality test to players.

That the Rams do things differently initially drew Jaguars owner Shad Khan to Gladstone, despite Gladstone never having previously interviewed for a GM job. “Today’s NFL is constantly changing,” Khan said. “It’s important for us to find a GM who’s unafraid of change, someone who can innovate, collaborate, communicate, and evolve. All of that describes James.”

Gladstone will blend and morph many of the methods he helped develop in L.A. with what already exists in Jacksonville. Changes are ahead, but he does not believe in slashing and burning, implementing his way simply because it’s what he did with the Rams. As he always has, he will listen and observe first. He will learn how people think.

At the beginning of his NFL career, Gladstone was a shadow in most meeting rooms. His status as Snead’s assistant back then meant that nobody ever paid attention to him as he observed them. He called his position his “cloak of invisibility.”

He saw how some football people reacted to Snead, a former offensive lineman from a small town in Alabama who maintains his drawl and peppers his conversation with lengthy pauses. He saw people dismiss Snead as old-school despite the Rams’ consistent shift toward progressivism. He watched how Snead strategically withheld emotion and how that often motivated others to speak up, unearthing a little extra information.

“I got to see the real side of people,” he said. “For as long as I could, I actually hung onto that in some ways when I was getting different title shifts and things like that. I would still introduce myself as Les’ assistant … because nobody is giving any thought to what that actually means or whether or not there is any influence. It also keeps folks’ guard down a little bit.”

There is now no avoiding his title, or the spotlight and pressure that come with it. Outside observers will draw early conclusions about him because he is young for the job and looks even younger. Gladstone easily disarms and is quicker to smile than Snead, but underneath lurks a strategist.

“It’s better to be underestimated,” Gladstone said. “I think you can leverage that a bit more effectively. Les is somebody who has certainly navigated those waters well. You’ve got to be OK with being underestimated. You’ve got to be confident enough with being underestimated, and knowing that if you’re too insecure with that you may overplay your hand or ego might stand in your way because you’d like to be perceived differently.”

He hopes to turn the perception into an advantage.