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Why Jaguars' James Gladstone, Liam Coen won't attend NFL combine
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- Why Jaguars' James Gladstone, Liam Coen won't attend NFL combine
The NFL combine begins next week, and the Jacksonville Jaguars' James Gladstone and Liam Coen will not be in attendance.
In recent years, this has been a growing trend, particularly among head coaches. However, most teams have at least one of the GM or the head coach in attendance.
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The Jaguars will still have their medical staff and members of their scouting department at the event to meet with prospects.
The other team that won't have either of those individuals in attendance is the LA Rams , which, of course, is where Gladstone had worked previously under GM Les Snead. Coen also spent time on Sean McVay's coaching staff.
ESPN's Michael DiRocco recently explained why Gladstone and Coen won't be at the 2026 NFL combine:
"All those workouts, the weight lifting, on the field, that will be taped and sent back to every single team, so the Jaguars don't feel like their brass needs to be in Indianapolis ," said DiRocco. "They can evaluate the players based on what they see on the film, and they'd rather rely on their scouting reports and the information their scouts have gathered on the players over the last several years.
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DiRocco continued, "So what about the prospect visits? The chance to sit down with the players at the combine? Well, the Jaguars don't want to conduct any of those, and they don't want to conduct any top 30 visits either because they don't want their opinion of a player to be changed or altered in any way based on a 15-20 minute visit. This is a system that the Rams use, and they've used it quite successfully, as you can see by their success over the last decade or so."
As we saw last year, the Jaguars operate in silence during the pre-draft process. While pre-draft visits for almost every team are being reported in the months leading up to the draft, that wasn't the case for the Jaguars.
That ability to fly under the radar is how a team also pulls off the huge trade to move up for Travis Hunter .
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: 2026 NFL combine: Jaguars' Gladstone, Coen won't attend event
