Jaguars owner won't make a hasty decision on Urban Meyer
We all knew Urban Meyer's debut with the Jacksonville Jaguars -- his first year in the league, stepping right in as a head coach, taking over the worst team in the league, playing a rookie at quarterback -- would be an adjustment. But we didn't know it would be this.
And this is an abject disaster on all fronts. It started in the offseason, when the Jaguars were slapped on the wrist for violating the NFL's collective bargaining agreement by holding too many OTAs, and also when Urban put his foot in his mouth by saying the team would consider vaccination status when filling out roster spots.
It continued into the season when Urban was videoed canoodling instead of joining his team on the trip back to Jacksonville after a Thursday night loss to Cincinnati.
The dysfunction continues this week, with Meyer reportedly calling his own assistants losers. Tensions are on the rise, and the head coach doesn't seem to have the greatest handle on his own roster.
On top of all that, the team is just not any good.
The Jags are 2-11, which is an improvement over a 2020 season in which the club won its opener and then dropped 15 straight, but the arrow is not pointing upward. Jacksonville has averaged 9.1 points over their last seven games, with a high of 17. That includes a 20-0 loss to Tennessee on Sunday.
All that said, Jaguars owner Shad Khan said he will not make any hasty decisions in regards to his first-year head coach. It doesn't sound like Meyer is in any danger of being fired tomorrow, but Khan also didn't guarantee Meyer will return in 2022.
"I want to do the right thing for the team. I want to do the right thing for the city," Khan told ESPN. "That, to me, is way more important than just acting helter-skelter on emotion. I think we have a history of really looking at the facts and then really doing the right thing.
"Gus Bradley was here four years. Doug Marrone was here four years. It was wins and losses and this is a little bit different but, you know, I'm going to reflect on all of that and do what's the right thing for the team and the right thing for the city."
Meyer has lost more games in three quarters of one season in Jacksonville than he did in seven at Ohio State, and his profile put the organization in a weird position. Normal 2-11 seasons in Jacksonville go unnoticed; this one has not.
"In the past it was like you were, quote, it's like the lowly Jaguars, and everyone left you alone," Khan said. "Now the scrutiny we have is really something different. How much of that is we're bringing it upon ourselves, or how much of that is deserved? Urban, he won wherever he was. This is something he's never dealt with.
"And when you win in football you create enemies, OK, and the only way you can really deal with that is you've got to win again."
