Les Snead Shares Context for Legendary Meeting With James Gladstone

The new Jacksonville Jaguars general manager got a last-minute seat on a West-bound train in 2016.

A Starbucks in Nichols Hills, Oklahoma is pictured, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. / Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Rather than preparing for his first Jaguars draft, James Gladstone may have spent this week finalizing his fall schedule as head coach of the Clayton High School Greyhounds. But thanks to a sprinkle of serendipity in his Starbucks, Gladstone’s life took another course.

Ten years ago, several events conspired to change that course. First, in 2015, a Missouri school administrator introduced Les Snead to Gladstone’s dad, the coaxed-out-of-retirement football coach at Clayton, Gene Gladstone. Snead, general manager of the then-St. Louis Rams, needed to feel good about choosing the right football environment for his son, Logan, a freshman linebacker.

“I go meet with him and you're just like, ‘You know what? My son's playing for this guy,” Snead told John Oehser on the O-Zone Podcast last week, referring to Gene. “I don't care if we win a game; that's who you want to develop him.’ But being a GM and things, I was like, ‘I'm not going to be the helicopter dad around the program.’”

He still had to be Dad at Back to School Night, and the Clayton Student Activities Director made one of the presentations that evening. That presenter was also the offensive coordinator on the football staff, Gene’s son, 24-year-old James Gladstone.

“Clayton High School had maybe 400 clubs,” Snead recalled. “And I remember this young guy getting up there and, the way he presented, I remember going home and telling my wife, ‘I want to join a club.’ It was that impressive. … My wife had met him at the bonfire. Just a very impressive human.”

Logan played his 2015 freshman season that fall, then prepared to leave with his dad and the rest of the Rams’ families as the NFL franchise announced plans to depart St. Louis and return to Los Angeles. But after the Rams had packed countless boxes and filled a convoy of Westbound tractor trailers, they still had one important late addition to their manifest: James Gladstone.

“He had reached out as we were going to leave to go to Los Angeles and said, ‘I'd love to have a meeting with you,’” Les Snead remembered. “So, we had this Starbucks that was on the corner that I always frequented, great place to go. It was the old-school Starbucks, where you had couches, and how it used to be, before everybody did mobile orders.

“Went, sat on a cool couch and talked about life, and he said he might want to do this journey in the NFL. And not necessarily to be a GM, but probably his natural-coded curiosity, let's call it broadening, expanding his horizons.”

That meeting wasn’t just a beginning for Gladstone. He also left his coaching career on that Starbucks couch. Snead told him that if he came to Los Angeles, he would cut his NFL teeth in scouting and not waste anyone’s time by eventually returning to a coaching role.

Snead also said he made a point never to follow Gladstone in presenting to the team. Gladstone was too good. Now, Gladstone gets to prepare another presentation, his first class of draft picks as general manager of the Jaguars.

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