Jacksonville Jaguars helmet Nov 3, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Jacksonville Jaguars helmets on the sidelines against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

The Jacksonville Jaguars have a new general manager.

On Friday, the Jaguars announced the hiring of James Gladstone to be the team’s next GM. As Jacksonville continues to try and dig out of a hole, they’ve undergone a significant change in their front office.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported the news on Gladstone’s hire on Friday afternoon.

“The Jaguars are hiring James Gladstone as their general manager,” Pelissero wrote on X.

Jacksonville is far from among the top franchises in the NFL. It wasn’t always this way necessarily either. When the Jags arrived in the mid-90s, it took them little to no time at all to start succeeding. They shocked the world by ousting John Elway and the Denver Broncos in their second season as an NFL franchise. In 1999, the team went 14-2 and earned three losses all year: All to the Tennessee Titans, who went to the Super Bowl that season after falling one game behind the Jags in the AFC Central.

The Jaguars made the AFC Championship Game in the 2017 season. Since then, it’s been a downward spiral. Really, since 2011, the Jaguars have fielded a relatively uncompetitive team. That’s somewhat difficult to do in the NFL, where variance is king. But the Jags have made it happen anyway.

So, in other words, they hope that Gladstone can break that cycle.

But with how things have trended, it’s anyone’s guess if it actually happens.

About Chris Novak

Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022