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Michael DiRocco
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan isn’t concerned that his general manager and head coach are in their roles for the first time.
He’s excited 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 executive vice president of football operations Tony Boselli — will energize a franchise that has lost 10 or more games in 10 of Khan’s 13 full seasons as the owner.
“We have great people and a great team of people, even though they might be in the position for the first time,” Khan said Monday during Gladstone’s introductory news conference. “I think collectively they’re going to have great success. I think we’re all aware that they’re new, but [they have] a huge amount of the potential to really grow into it.
“The brainpower, the bandwidth, the different experience, are really complementary. … This isn’t about, ‘Hey, I’ve got X years of experience in something.’ A lot of times it turns out to be one year of experience X times over. I just think the brain matter here is going to be great for the Jaguars.”
Gladstone is the latest piece of the puzzle. He comes to Jacksonville after spending the last nine seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, with the last three as the team’s director of scouting strategy. He joined the Rams in 2016 as senior assistant to GM Les Snead after working as a football coach and in various administrative positions at two high schools in St. Louis.
With the Rams, Gladstone helped Snead in strategic planning and the execution of the team’s daily scouting processes. He also scouted players and worked on special projects.
Coen first became an offensive coordinator at the University of Maine in 2016, and he followed that with stops with the Rams (twice), University of Kentucky (twice), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a position coach and offensive coordinator.
Coen’s picks for offensive (Grant Udinski) and defensive (Anthony Campanile) coordinators also are in those roles for the first time, too.
Gladstone and Coen don’t see their ages — or inexperience — as such a big deal. They both worked closely with Rams head coach Sean McVay, who was the youngest head coach in NFL history when the Rams hired him in 2017. McVay’s age or inexperience clearly hasn’t held him back or kept the Rams from having success.
“I don’t know that we’ve actually talked about our age at all,” Gladstone said. “The interesting thing I do think we both start from a place of humility, and I think that that makes a lot of stuff easy and seamless. While at the same time there’s this aura of confidence and understanding that we have a dynamic asset and that is our ability to see what tools are available and apply and execute those within our spheres.
“And so I don’t know that age has ever been something that my mind’s ever gone to as a part of this process. And we certainly haven’t even brought up in any conversations.”
“I saw this guy completely dominate that position. The ability to communicate with both scouting and the coaches was just at such a different level than I was used to seeing.”
Coach Coen on watching GM James Gladstone spearhead UDFA signings during their shared time in LA. pic.twitter.com/1Xp4fhUADl
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) February 24, 2025
With Coen, finding a way to reach the players — regardless of how old he is — is the most important thing.
“This is a league where you have to be able to connect with people that are coming out of college, right?” Coen said. “They’re coming out of college, they’re coming from an NIL landscape, from the transfer portal landscape. This game is ever evolving and ever changing as we’ve talked about. Can we connect with the players?
“That to me is all that really matters. Can the staff, the personnel department, Tony [Boselli], can we all connect with these players to be able to get the best product on the field?”
That has been the franchise’s biggest problem, even before Khan purchased the team from original owner Wayne Weaver in November 2011 for $770 million. Aside from a four-year run from 1996-1999, the Jaguars have only been able to find sporadic success. They’ve made the playoffs just four times (2005, 2007, 2017, 2022) and have had back-to-back winning seasons just twice since 1999.
Khan’s last three coaching hires — Doug Marrone, Urban Meyer and Doug Pederson — had each been head coaches before. Two had experienced massive success — Meyer won two national titles at Florida and Pederson won a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles — but all three tenures ended with nothing to show for the Jaguars.
Khan has opted for a different approach this time and feels great about it.
“Well, what a start to 2025,” Khan said. “I hope everyone is as energized as I am, as we aim at the bright future on the field and continue to succeed as we have off the field.”