There have been a few reports of the Rams making additions and changes to their football operations staff, and today the team announced all of them in full.
The headline addition is Brian Xanders, who joins Los Angeles as its Senior Personnel Executive. Xanders spent 2009-2012 as the general manager of the Broncos, where he drafted one of the best outside pass rusher in the league Von Miller, wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, cornerback Chris Harris, and tight end Julius Thomas.
After his stint with the Broncos, Sanders spent the last four seasons with the Lions as a Senior Personnel Executive.
Xanders previously worked with General Manager Les Snead, as they shared a decade with the Falcons from 1997-2007. There, Xanders served a variety of roles across the organization, including football operations, coaching, scouting, player personnel, and technology.
It's been 10 years since the pair has worked together, and on Thursday Snead sounded like he was looking forward to reviving the partnership.
"The one thing that I can say about Brian is he is extremely smart, has done it all in this league, has been salary cap, has been a college scout, a pro scout, has been defensive quality control," Snead said. "[B]ack in the day, he was very instrumental in putting together new technologies for football and kind of on the cusp of analytics, so there are a lot of things Brian can bring to the table, projects we can give him, to help us execute our strategy."
Xanders is expected to assist in all areas of the Rams' player personnel department — including college scouting, pro personnel, coaching research, and football systems development.
Also in the personnel department, the Rams have added Marty Barrett as a national scout and Matt Waugh as a pro scouting assistant. Brad Holmes stays on as the club's director of college scouting and James Gladstone continues as the senior assistant to the general manager with the added title of player personnel coordinator.
"We wanted to take the moment after last year — because that is not acceptable at all — and go, 'OK, this is a chance to recalibrate, a chance to learn and then especially apply what you learned,'" Snead said. "And again, I mentioned before that as a general manager, one of your jobs is to get the right people in and also put the right people in the right seats. And we did do some shifting according to strengths and weaknesses of the group and tried to get them in a place so that they can help the Los Angeles Rams succeed."
Below are the 10 individuals who have either new or changed positions in the personnel department.
Brian Xanders, Senior Personnel Executive
Taylor Morton, Senior Personnel Advisor
Teddy Monago, Assistant Director of College Scouting
Marty Barrett, National Scout
JW Jordan, Director of Draft Management
Ray Agnew, Director of Pro Personnel
John McKay, Pro Scout
Matt Waugh, Pro Scouting Assistant
Michael Pierce, Area Scout
Billy Johnson, Area Scout
Vito Gonella, Area Scout
*BOLD — Denotes new hire *
