Opinion: Jaguars must cut ties with Urban Meyer for Trevor Lawrence's sake
Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan already has his answer for what’s in the best interest of his team.
Unless he wants to piss away the NFL’s most highly touted young quarterback since Andrew Luck, that is.
Khan’s only concern in deciding the fate of Urban Meyer has to be Trevor Lawrence, and the long-term impact that repeating this dumpster fire of a season will have on the cornerstone of his franchise. Does he want Lawrence to follow the career paths of Luck, Peyton Manning and Cam Newton, all of whom were playoff contenders early on?
Or is he willing to roll the dice and pray that Lawrence doesn’t become yet another also-ran whose talent was squandered because of his team’s ineptitude?
“He’s vital,” Khan said of Lawrence during a get-together with reporters Monday for what was supposed to be a celebration of the 10-year anniversary of his purchase of the Jaguars. “Look at how he’s handled the last week, and I think it’s exemplary. I have nothing but the utmost respect.”
Then don’t ruin the overall No. 1 pick by continuing to saddle him with a coach who is in over his head and shows no interest in adapting to the NFL.
Meyer has given Khan any number of reasons to cut ties on their much-hyped relationship after only a year. Meyer hasn’t come close to duplicating the success he had in college, with just two wins and 11 losses, several of them by lopsided margins. He appears to have lost the locker room, with assistant coaches and maybe players leaking evidence of the dysfunction.
He’s had embarrassing moments off the field, too, creating needless distractions for a franchise that can least afford them.
Meyer’s biggest failing, though, is that Lawrence isn’t improving. In fact, he appears to be regressing.
He’s thrown for less than 230 yards in each of the last six games and has just one touchdown in that span. His 14 interceptions so far this season are three less than he had in his career at Clemson, and Sunday was the first game, at any level, where Lawrence threw four picks.
“It obviously starts with me, being the quarterback. I’ve got to accept all the blame for what I did,” Lawrence said after the game. “I didn’t play well, didn’t put us in good situations.”
But is Meyer putting Lawrence in position to change that? Lawrence showed flashes of improvements early in the season, particularly in the game at Cincinnati. The last two months, though, he’s made what seems like one egregious mistake in every game, and he acknowledged last week that he was overthinking things.
If Lawrence develops bad habits now, or his confidence nose dives, it will be hard, if not impossible, for the next coach to get him back on track.
Khan said Monday he doesn’t want to act “helter-skelter on emotions,” and pointed to the four years he gave former coaches Gus Bradley and Doug Marrone. But after just one winning season since 2008, the Jaguars have a very small window of opportunity to build what could potentially be, if not a dominant team, at least a successful one.
Lawrence is a unique talent, leading Clemson to the national title as a freshman and finishing with a 34-2 record that gave him the third-best winning percentage for any quarterback since 1978. He also has the maturity and personality to elevate an entire franchise.
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Equally important, despite being the overall No. 1 pick, Lawrence is going to come cheap for the next three years, possibly four if the Jaguars exercise the option they’ll have, thanks to the structure of rookie contracts. His biggest cap hit comes in the last year of his rookie contract, and it will still only be $11.7 million – the equivalent of pocket change when you consider the NFL’s salary cap was $182.5 million this year and will only keep going up.
The Jaguars can take the money they don’t need to pay Lawrence, along with the slew of picks they have in next year’s draft, and build a stellar supporting cast. Because even if Lawrence is the NFL’s best quarterback, as Tom Brady’s wife so famously pointed out once, he cannot throw and catch the ball at the same time. Nor can he prevent opposing offenses from piling up points.
But use that stockpile of cash and picks to bolster the offensive line and defense, and pick up some high-octane toys for Lawrence to play with, and the Jaguars could soon have a team to rival the Kansas City Chiefs.
That’s only if Khan doesn’t allow Meyer to wreck Lawrence, though. And so far, that seems to be about the only thing Meyer is capable of accomplishing in the NFL.
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.