Rams' loss of James Gladstone as Jaguars GM necessitates a front-office shuffle

The Los Angeles Rams have become accustomed to the fact that 31 other NFL teams typically shop early and often from the team's coaching staff when trying to clip and graft victory-inspiring coaches into their respective locker rooms. It's frustrating of course, but the Rams football organization is so successful in getting coaches from top to bottom promoted that it's become a sort of NFL Mecca for young upwardly mobile coaches.

But that has changed, grown if you would, with the team's loss of former personnel executive Brad Holmes to take over as the new Detroit Lions General Manager. After years of languishing looking for any level of success, the Lions have transformed into the NFC North powerhouse that has found winning to be habit forming.

That success seemed to inspire the Jacksonville Jaguars to take a similar path to rebuilding their team in 2025. One of the key architects of the recent draft successes has been Rams personnel executive James Gladstone. While it's always encouraging to witness talented executives earn promotions, the exodus of Gladstone places the success of future Rams drafts into question.

But the Rams always seem to roll with the punches and come out swinging. In fact, the loss of Gladstone to the Jaguars has already been the catalyst for a dozen moves in the team's front office. So who moved up in the org chart?

Per the LA Rams official website, the team has promoted 12 personnel and scouting executives this offseason.

• John McKay | Assistant GM
• Nicole Blake | Director Scouting, Strategy, & Analytics
• Ray Farmer | Senior Advisor to GM
• Taylor Martin | Senior Personnel Executive & Deputy Chief of College Scouting Staff
• Billy Johnson | Senior Scouting Exec.
• Matt Waugh | Director, Pro Personnel
• Brian Hill | National Scout
• Michael Pierce | National Scout
• Vito Gonella | Regional Scout
• Cedric Jones | Regional Scout
• Micheal Young | Pro Scout
• Kellen Clemens | Special Assistant to the General Manager/Analyst

That's the list of new titles for 12 Rams personnel executives. Now, who did Gladstone persuade to join him on his way out the door?

Who joined James Gladstone on Jaguars staff?

The Los Angeles Rams have made decision-making into a part art form and part data analytics. You can thank the presence of the Rams Data Analytics department, a.k.a. the Nerd's Nest. Even as far back as 2020, the Rams were leaning heavily into a data-supported process to evaluate players, and prospects, and used that process to refine the process for future decisions.

So what did Jake Temme do? To answer that question, I'll share this video that helped to explain the entire data analytics role in the Rams front office decision making. And yes, Jake Temme was part of that group five years ago.

There have been refinements and improvements to the Nerds Nest process. By hiring Jake Temme away from the Rams, not only do the Jaguars graft his data analytics knowledge into their personnel process, but they jumpstart their own data analytics with all of the lessons learned by Temme in terms of generating actionable information to the Jacksonville Jaguars personnel executives.

I'm not clear how the loss of James Gladstone and Jake Temme might impact the Rams success in the 2025 NFL Draft, but it certainly will not help to improve the results. The Rams have been deeply immersed into the draft selection process, and they have lost two key contributors to managing the universe of scenarios and options.

I'm not sure how this will all impact the Rams draft. But I can be sure that the Jacksonville Jaguars draft process just became a lot better.

As always, thanks for reading.

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