While the season is young and there is time to turn things around for the Jacksonville Jaguars, one of their leaders, Urban Meyer, is making that difficult at the moment. In a time where the Jags need to have all their attention on the Tennessee Titans, his recent viral videos with him getting comfortable with an unknown woman isn’t helping the team from a football operations standpoint.
Coming into this opportunity with the Jags, many felt there was a chance Meyer could be successful in the NFL as he reportedly sat back and studied the game from a distance. Additionally, he “talked the talk,” as the saying goes, while working for Fox Sports as a television analyst.
On multiple occasions, Meyer would explain the things needed to make a football program successful whether it was on or off the field. He even went as far as examining keys that led to a struggling team once in 2020. Those keys were trust issues, a dysfunctional environment, and selfishness, respectively, which sounds a lot like the situation he’s currently found himself in.
— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) October 5, 2021
Starting with trust issues, there is a lot of that going on after Meyer made it seem as though he had a simple outing with friends, which very well could’ve been the initial plan. However, the videos that surfaced don’t indicate that it ended up being a regular outing, and as a result, Jags owner Shad Khan feels the story he was told doesn’t add up. In fact, in his statement, Khan said that Meyer will have to “regain” the organization’s trust again.
That’s not something fans exactly want to hear five weeks into the season. While it’s not fair to accuse Meyer of wanting to free his mind and drink a few beers, the issue is that he wasn’t smart about his surroundings as the leader of an organization and wasn’t truthful in his boss’s eyes.
As for the dysfunctional environment part, it’s safe to say things haven’t been normal at the Jags’ facility at times, although it allegedly was that way before Meyer got there, too. However, once Meyer was hired, it didn’t take long for him to make the work environment awkward by hiring Chris Doyle as the head man of the strength and conditioning department.
As many are aware, Doyle was tied to accusations of racist remarks and abuse, which couldn’t have sat well with the players or made any of them comfortable. Sure, Doyle ultimately left them, but many wondered why Meyer even tried to make that situation work in the first place, especially when looking at Meyer’s hires of the past.
When further evaluating the Doyle situation, it could also fall under selfishness because Meyer couldn’t have considered the feelings of his players although Doyle’s situation never surpassed the accusations stage. Still, when considering Meyer has pushed the narrative of giving the players the best coaches, facilities, and more, Doyle isn’t the type of hire that feels wise.
Then, to pile on to the last of ability to avoid dysfunction, there is the addition of Tim Tebow that shook things up and it certainly didn’t make the environment normal for a while. Though he was ultimately cut, one would think Meyer knew his ultimate fate, which undoubtedly left some players to question whether the opportunity should’ve been given to another player.
So, in a nutshell, Meyer hasn’t followed his blueprint to success all that well. Maybe if he had done that, though, things would be flowing a little more smoothly in his first year in the NFL.
Again, it’s early in the season, and there is time to turn it around, but Meyer has to make smarter decisions if he wants to earn the respect of the NFL community.