Former Ohio State and Florida coach Urban Meyer wouldn’t listen to the University of Texas a few weeks ago but is, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, contemplating a possible return to coaching — in the NFL.
Schefter says two teams have inquired about Meyer’s interest, then posits that the Jacksonville Jaguars might be a good fit.
Meyer’s .853 winning percentage in college is easily the best of the modern era. He won national titles with the Buckeyes and Gators. His teams were perpetually well-prepared. It’s easy to see why this interest exists.
It’s still an awful idea. Meyer is the quintessential college coach, a smooth-talking salesman who built fiefdoms on football-mad campuses where he could get away with almost anything as long as his teams won.
That approach won’t work in an NFL locker room, where players have actual power, or in a modern organization where a collaborative approach — one that includes input from a general manager, scouts and analytics-minded researchers — is essential. Meyers has never shown the grace needed to work in that sort of environment. He much prefers to exist in his own reality, where he doles out accountability but never labors under it.
Let’s look at his history.
Meyer, still only 56, stated that he was retiring from Ohio State after the 2018 season due to health concerns. He’d been suspended three games that year after an investigation revealed that he had failed to properly handle allegations of spousal abuse by an assistant coach, Zach Smith, who’d long been a Meyer protege.
Meyer spent much of that season being irked that he had to answer questions about the Smith situation — and never really seemed to get around to actually being sorry that a woman and her children had been endangered by a man Meyer was supposedly supervising and nurturing. He tried to talk his way out of the situation but never made much sense.
(You know what? I wrote a full timeline of this a year ago, when Meyer was spotted at a Redskins game, so you can see the full explanation there.)
Meyer also left Florida due to health concerns, only to have reports of how messy the program had become pop up after he was gone.
Let me be clear about one thing: I’m not suggesting Meyer’s health concerns are a convenient excuse. People close to him, like Cris Carter, have attested to how harrowing his issues have been. But I am saying that Jim Harbaugh was right (and it pains me to agree with him): Controversy follows Urban Meyer.
The nature of that controversy is cause for concern. In both instances, it was clear that Meyer wanted to run an insular program wherein he was the judge and jury and nobody was allowed to ask him any questions.
That might work in a locker room where kids depend on a coach for scholarships, or at a school where the president depends on wooing big donors with football revelry. The dynamics in the NFL are much different. Billionaire owners make the important decisions along with hand-picked executives and unionized, millionaire players must be persuaded to follow your lead because you’re smart and fair.
There’s no doubt that Meyer could put together a good staff who would bring modern ideas to a team. It’s not like he’s proven himself inflexible on that front; he built an innovative spread attack at Utah by cribbing from other coaches and allowing his assistants to have real input. That’s a good trait for a coach to have.
The rhythm of an NFL season might be better for him, too. Without needing to recruit, he could have a more balanced life, especially during the offseason.
And maybe Meyer has changed — or would change, given the chance. There’s just very little to suggest he can truly lead without having the extra leverage of a dictator, or that his methods are sustainable when he’s forced to operate in cooperation with, or under the everyday scrutiny, of others.
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