He’s only been an NFL head coach for a couple months now, but new Jacksonville Jaguars head man Urban Meyer hasn’t shied away from criticizing the league’s system. He didn’t like the way free agency operates, especially when it comes to the legal tampering period. Before the start of the new league year, teams have just two days to negotiate contracts with players. Because of this, deals must be struck remotely without the two parties actually meeting.
At his press conference on Friday morning, Meyer said he’s not a fan of negotiating with and signing players without having ever met them.
“Yeah, that was awful,” Meyer said. “I don’t agree with it, but no one asked my opinion. I guess in the old days you could bring them in and meet them, have dinner with them, you find out the football intellect, find out their character. The thing you don’t [do], I found out, is call someone who has skin in the game because they’re going to not quite — I don’t see honest as a very appropriate [word]. So we did a deep dive. Every guy that we signed, we did.
“To answer your question, that was awful, and I don’t believe it should be that way. Not when you’re making organizational decisions. I’m not sure how that rule came about, but to me that’s not good business.”
Meyer compared the free agency process with recruiting at the college level, illustrating the differences between the two. Namely, the fact that contracts and cap space severely limits which players you can target. Meyer was a stellar recruiter in college at both Florida and Ohio State, but he’s still trying to figure out how to translate that to the professional level.
“In recruiting we would have our recruiting meeting and identify the best players and say go get them,” Meyer said. “And, then all of a sudden I start finding out this guy cost $28 million and this guy costs … I knew it, to say I didn’t know it, of course I knew it, but just the way you put that puzzle together about here’s your cap space, here’s your choices, can we take him but we get three of these guys to help. And so I imagine once you build your roster exactly the way you want it, then you can take one guy and go get that $25 million athlete.
“We’re not in position to do that right now. We’re just not. So it was a learning experience, and I feel great about it.”
It’s good for the Jags that the new staff learned from its first free agency, though it didn’t result in any of the splashy signings the fanbase may have hoped for. Meyer and Co. had a clear approach, and whether or not that approach works out largely depends on next month’s NFL Draft.