Opinion: Everyone but Urban Meyer and Shad Khan saw this debacle coming for the Jaguars
The only ones who didn’t see this debacle coming were Urban Meyer and Shad Khan.
OK, maybe not the speed of Meyer’s downfall, which resulted in his firing early Thursday with a full month left in the NFL season. But anyone who followed him even a bit at Ohio State or Florida could see that Meyer’s inflated opinion of himself, his unshakable belief that he knows best and certainly more than everyone else, wasn’t going to fly in the NFL.
Meyer could get away with being the all-knowing and powerful Oz in college, where players are young and persuadable and have little, if any, leverage. But the NFL is a business. Players are grown men who know their careers have a short shelf life without the safety net of guaranteed contracts. Every buffoonish decision by a coach is a direct threat to their livelihoods and financial security, and they will not suffer those missteps quietly.
It’s a good bet Meyer had never before had his quarterback challenge his personnel decisions, as Trevor Lawrence essentially did last week when he said twice-benched running back James Robinson “has got to be on the field.”
“In my eyes, obviously, I'm the one that's out, see all the pieces moving, I see the whole picture,” Lawrence said then.
Left unsaid was that Meyer, who was punishing Robinson for his fumbles, did not.
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It’s an even better bet that Meyer had not gotten pushback from players he’d berated or demeaned, as Marvin Jones did in defense of himself and the rest of the Jaguars receiving corps.
And for sure Meyer has never experienced anything quite like his interaction with former kicker Josh Lambo, who told the Tampa Bay Times on Wednesday that Meyer had cursed at and kicked him as he stretched during training camp.
Meyer denied the incident. But Lambo said his agent went to the Jaguars’ legal counsel afterward, which both the agent and the Jaguars confirmed.
Within hours, Meyer was out.
“After deliberation over many weeks and a thorough analysis of the entirety of Urban’s tenure with our team, I am bitterly disappointed to arrive at the conclusion that an immediate change is imperative for everyone," Khan said in a statement. “I informed Urban of the change this evening. As I stated in October, regaining our trust and respect was essential. Regrettably, it did not happen.”
And whose fault is that?
Khan hadn’t just been enamored of Meyer’s success in college, where he won three national titles. He’d been captivated by the whole persona.
“He’s a winner, a leader, and a champion,” Khan gushed at Meyer’s introductory news conference in January.
But he soon learned what so many other owners who believed a coach’s success in college would be transferable to the NFL have found: It’s a different ballgame.
Meyer was no different as the Jaguars coach than he was at Ohio State and Florida – minus the winning, of course – and that was his problem.
He thought his endorsement of Chris Doyle would outweigh the accusations of racist remarks and bullying when Doyle was the strength and conditioning coach at Iowa. He didn’t see how bringing in Tim Tebow, and his certainty about the imagined influence his former quarterback would have on the locker room, would fall flat with NFL players fighting for a job.
Meyer didn’t realize that coaches don’t get weekends off during the middle of the NFL season, especially when their team is 0-4. He didn’t appreciate, until a video surfaced of him getting friendly with a woman who is not his wife, that the spotlight of the NFL is larger, hotter and reaches everywhere.
And in the cardinal of all sins, Meyer demanded accountability from everyone but himself.
That Meyer's time in Jacksonville was going to end badly was obvious. The only ones who didn't foresee it were the two people who could have done something about it.
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.