During ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown show, ESPN Senior NFL Insider Chris Mortensen named a couple of coaches from the college ranks who could potentially emerge as candidates to replace Urban Meyer, who was of course fired by the Jacksonville Jaguars this past week.
Meyer flamed out with the Jaguars just 13 games into his tenure as the team’s head coach, and Mortensen believes that may dissuade Jacksonville ownership from taking a chance on another college coach to lead the franchise – even one who has had success at the collegiate level like Meyer, who won two national titles at Florida and another at Ohio State.
However, Mortensen says the Jaguars, in their search for a new head coach, could perhaps still look at college coaches with NFL experience, such as Stanford’s David Shaw – an NFL assistant for nine years (1997-2005) with the Eagles, Raiders and Ravens – or Ohio State’s Ryan Day – a quarterbacks coach for the Eagles in 2015 and 49ers in 2016.
“This does negatively impact college coaches who may have an eye on the NFL, and vice versa,” Mortensen said of Meyer’s firing. “Although I had a few GMs this week tell me that if a college coach has some NFL in his background – and there is one, David Shaw of Stanford, he’s been with three different NFL teams, and Ryan Day, who’s been with two NFL teams – then they are still on the list if they have an interest.
“And some of these college coaches, now experiencing NIL in the form of transfer portals and free agency, would they be thinking to themselves, ‘If I got free agency in college, maybe I’ll look to the NFL.’ So, this will be something to watch as we go through the coaching landscape.”
For those that have speculated about Dabo Swinney possibly leaving Clemson to reunite with quarterback Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville as the Jaguars’ next coach, Mortensen shut that idea down.
“As for a guy like Dabo Swinney, who isn’t happy with NILs and free agency – no,” Mortensen said. “He doesn’t have any NFL background. And after Urban Meyer, people should not be looking for him to go to Jacksonville, even though he’s an entirely different person.”
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