Big League Brotherhood

There’s only 32 in the world, and Auburn can claim two.

Los Angeles Rams General Manager Les Snead ’94, a former Auburn football player, was a pro scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons before serving as the Falcons’ director of player personnel. In 2012 he was named general manager of the St. Louis Rams, helped move the team to LA and made two Super Bowls, winning one in 2021.

General Manager Joe Hortiz ’98, previously the director of player personnel for the Baltimore Ravens, spent more than 20 years with that organization, winning Super Bowls in 2000 and 2012. He was appointed general manager of the Los Angeles Chargers in January 2024.

Auburn Magazine brought these two general managers, competitors—and friends—together to discuss life in the pressure cooker of pro football.

Les, you’ve lived in Los Angeles since 2016, but Joe just moved here from Baltimore in January. Did you give him any advice about living in L.A.?

Les Snead: I think the only impact I’ve made was telling his second-oldest teenager “just get to Thanksgiving.” He’d basically grown up in Baltimore, and all of a sudden, he’s about to start his sophomore year of high school in another city, about as far away from the East Coast as you can get. When I made the move, my oldest was in the middle of 9th grade. So I don’t know if I helped Joe, but I was real with his son.

Joe Hortiz: Les, it was very helpful and I was very appreciative, from a parental standpoint and a friend standpoint. My wife was very grateful for you talking to Jack, and he heard it, and it is a challenge. And I’ll tell you that Les has been giving me advice for longer than that. He’s been a great resource and friend to me, and when I got the job, he kind of gave me the lay of the land. The one thing he said is, “make sure you live at the beach,” so I followed his advice. But it’s great to have someone that’s gone through it, and especially with his children being similar ages.

You both started your careers as Auburn grad assistants. What do you remember about that time?

Les Snead: You know what’s really neat? Joe and I, probably because of that start at Auburn, I think our careers have been somewhat connected. It’s really neat now that Joe’s gotten to the GM seat, but it seems like a long time ago. I’ll put it in perspective—my first year in the GA room, we spent the fall watching the trial of OJ Simpson. So anytime I’m driving down the 405, I’m [reminded] of my first year being a GA at Auburn.

Joe Hortiz: I just remember walking into that GA room—it doesn’t even exist anymore, because we’re in a new facility—but I can just picture it. Les was right across from Danny Raines’ ’91 office, and he was doing all the recruiting stuff. Will Muschamp on the other side. Benji Roland ’92 was our offensive GA. And then Taylor Morton, who [now] works with Les, was in there working the camps. It was like a beehive, man; everyone was buzzing and working. But it did instill something in you, because they gave us a lot of opportunity to do our jobs and put a lot on us.

Les Snead: It’s cool to see Joe’s success because, everybody else he’s talking about, we were done with school and Joe was a freshman. He still had to show up to class at 8 a.m.

Joe Hortiz: I started working there—it was actually my sophomore year—and my grades took a huge jump up honestly because football helped develop a structure and a plan for me.

Most NFL fans only think of GMs when it comes time to signing player contracts. While that’s a major part of the job, what else are you involved in? Is it what you expected?

Joe Hortiz: I’ve been able to watch [Baltimore Ravens executive] Ozzie Newsome. I’ve been able to watch [Ravens GM] Eric DeCosta to transition into it. I’ve known guys like Les my whole career that have gone through the transition, and to a man, they all say the one thing that got you there isn’t going to be the thing you’re doing as much, and that’s scouting.

Les Snead: The number one job as a GM is help the organization engineer a competent team. But if you sent your resume, they wouldn’t even hire you as an assistant, so I think that’s challenging. I remember the first six months on the job, it’s like they hooked a hose to a fire hydrant and started spraying everything at you. Joe’s probably right there in that moment.

Joe Hortiz: The first two weeks, I didn’t watch a lick of film. It was all head coach organization, helping coach [Jim Harbaugh] fill out his staff. You do your best to attack it, but you also try to stay structured. Get in early, set times, and hold times. If you’ve set a time for a 9 o’clock meeting, start at 9, even if you got a meeting at 8, because there are a lot of people relying on you.

Everyone thinks you should just take the best available player in the draft. Is there any sort of outside philosophy to building a team or selecting players?

Les Snead: Best available is very subjective. Joe will tell you, there are 32 draft boards. There are definitely some similarities, but I bet you, based on fits and scheme fits, best available is very subjective. And SEC fans, I probably got more—I don’t want to call it hate mail—but we took a kicker from Stanford in the 6th round, and we didn’t draft a kicker from Alabama. He went right before us. But being from Alabama, even though I’m an Auburn guy, everyone wanted us to draft him.

Joe Hortiz: You do take the best player available—for your organization. The media says take best available. Well, it’s not what Mel Kiper Jr. and all the draft pundits say. I may not have taken Les’s highest player on his board, but that’s for the Rams and this is for the Chargers. So—

Les Snead: You mean we could have waited to draft Blake Corum? Jeez, Joe!

Joe Hortiz: [Laughing] I don’t know how much longer you could have waited! I think you took him at the right spot. I don’t think he would have been around with your next pick, Les!

Les Snead: [Laughing] Shouldn’t tell me that now.

Joe Hortiz: But that’s the thing—what is the moment like. When Les is up again, the best available player on his board may be another running back, but [he’s] already addressed it. There is a little bit of art to it, and there’s a little bit of science mixed in. Ultimately, our job is to blend the two together and make the best decision for our organizations.

You’ve both helped build Super Bowl-winning teams. Did you feel something special about that season, or like you had something special in the room?

Joe Hortiz: In 2000 I was a young kid. I really didn’t have a lot to do with building that team, other than picking guys up from the airport and maybe evaluating some free agents. But, even then, you knew the defense was elite. We felt like we were the best team in the preseason, and it proved itself throughout the course of the season.

We knew we were a good team in 2012. You felt like all the pieces were there, but you got to get hot at the right moment. You got to be peaking in the playoffs, and it requires a little bit of luck to win a Super Bowl. This past year, I felt like Baltimore had the best team in the league. We just didn’t get it done, and that’s the game.

It’s so hard to win a Super Bowl, and I can tell you this—when we won in 2012 versus 2000, it felt a lot different to me. That feeling you have—I remember [when the Rams won], I sent Les a congratulations text, and he just said back, “it’s great to be part of the club.” It’s just such a simple text, but I knew how impactful and how much joy and how great he felt in that moment. There’s nothing like it. The only thing I could compare it to, maybe, is the birth of a child and getting married, but it’s just such a special moment.

Les Snead: Come on, Joe. You know the Super Bowl means more than those. I may be the only sociopath on the call who admits it.

Joe Hortiz: [Laughing] It’s just in case Jen and the boys read this, Les.

Les Snead: I think my family knows that answer.

Same question to you, Les. Did that 2021 team feel special?

Les Snead: I think that team probably started in ’18, and we definitely knew that we had one of the better offenses in football, cumulatively. But we skied for the gold, and we ended up with the silver, and I don’t think Joe’s gone through that. That is a low point. Somehow your brain always goes back to that. Even now, even after winning one, there’s a moment in the day where you go, “Wow! We could have had two of these things, right?” Tom Brady only had 6 points in the 4th quarter. Somehow, we didn’t come home with that trophy. But we knew what we had.

The funny thing is, midway through that Super Bowl year, we traded for Von Miller. Then Odell Beckham Jr. gets cut from Cleveland and decided to come here. So we get Von Miller, we get OBJ, and we lose three straight with a bye week. It’s over 30 days without a win. But as Joe said, down the stretch, you catch fire, and it all comes together somehow. You’re the last team standing. Especially those final four, I’m betting each one of those teams could easily win the championship. But the amount of texts you get, you realize this is a global event that is somehow very, very important on planet earth.

Les, this will be your 29th season in the NFL, and Joe it’ll be your 27th. How do you feel?

Joe Hortiz: You’re just blessed to be a part of it. The NFL is a community, and it’s a great community. You don’t take it for granted. You just enjoy every day and know that it’s kind of a gift, man. We get to put together and manage a football team for a living, which a lot of people do on their own for free.

Les Snead: I think what’s really neat is to add Auburn to it, right? That special club that is Auburn. Joe and I were talking to one of our side judges in the league who’s an Auburn alum living in Birmingham. It’s pretty neat when you’re in that football ecosystem and you can tie it back to wherever Joe and I were at. We’re never going to walk by each other at the [NFL] Combine and not say anything, right? You might do that with other people, but they don’t have that bond that goes back to Auburn.

By Derek Herscovici ’14