“Good Record–Bad Guy”

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You can look at the man’s won-loss record and be impressed.

You can look at his postseason bowl record and say wow.

You read about all his decisions and you have to start questioning the man

You listen to his comments, and you decide you don’t want to be around him.

The NFL has an ideology, of wanting the right guy in a foxhole with you when the going gets tough.  Anybody want to be in a foxhole with Urban Meyer, the disgraced-fired coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Guess his career record of (199-35) is less impressive right now.  More deparessing is who he is, what he stands for, how he has acted.

Meyer’s career took him from Bowling Green (17-6) to Utah (22-2).  The big time beckoned him to Florida (65-15) and then Ohio State (83-9)

His failure in the NFL (2-11) is not the first time a big name college coach has collapsed, but this one was more wrapped around his personal life, habits, and treatment of people rather than just X-Os, or wins and losses.

His career at Florida was marred by 31-Gator players who were arrested during his time in Gainesville.  The same  head coach who recruited gang member Aaron Hernandez in college, let him run the streets,  despite issues cited by the police on campus.

At Ohio State, he covered up for an assistant coach who was embroiled in a series of spousal abuse incidents with his wife who decided to sue for divorce.  Meyer knew and never did anything about it.  He was suspended by OSU too.

For a guy who left Florida and Ohio State because of so-called health issues, he shows up in the NFL, hand picked to develop the first choice in the draft, Clemson QB-Trevor Lawrence.

From the very start, there were problems everywhere in Jacksonville.

A team with 70M in salary cap space, fails to land marquee players to put around his first round draft pick.  And then Meyer criticized the NFL system to get players.

His first off season workouts triggered 300,000-dollars in fines for violation of OTA workouts.

Meyer inherited a team that lost 15-in a row last year, kept losing at the start of the season.

The bloom came off the rose pretty quickly.  Then Meyer did not get on a team flight after a lousy loss to Cincinnati.  When next seen hours later, videos surfaced of him getting lap dances at his favorite bar hang out in Columbus.

He never showed up for film review with his team on Monday and canceled meetings on Tuesday.  So much for coaching leadership.  He lost the locker-room

Sandwiched around all that was the hiring-firing of controversial strength coach Chris Doyle, who had been fired weeks earlier for a history of racial slurs directed at players he coached at Iowa.

Then the in season screaming match with his top receiver Marvin Jones, and the information about him kicking and cursing his kicker Josh Lambo in a tantrum over missed field goals..

The final incident had to be the yelling match with his assistants, ‘I’m a winner-you’re a loser’.

Nice leadership skills of your head coach eh?

Tired of his act, tired of the continuing laundry list of situations that kept happening, owner Shad Khan ended it all at midnight on Tuesday last week.

Khan, a non football guy, had hired the shiny new object last winter, impressed by Meyer’s record, but not having done enough to probe who this guy was, how he treated people and probe the decisions he made.

After the bar incident, Meyer was told ‘you have to regain our trust’.  The message never got thru, as the former Gators-Buckeyes coach just kept doing what he wanted in his own style and flair.  To him there was no need for accountability.

Now the negative stories will leak out further.  How he walked out of coaches meetings and did not take part in game plans.  How he would check out at 5pm, leaving assistants to work till midnight.  How he had no grasp of players talent levels, and how to fit them into packages and systems.

He also never understood how the NFL player ticks, how dedication to the game coms from smart players who want leadership but invoke the right to say what they think.

Urban Meyer couldn’t bully these guys, threaten these guys, act as if he could take away their scholarships or release them outright.  The NFL Union would not let him cross those lines.

Left behind is alot of wreckage.  Trevor Lawrence has thrown 1-TD in his last seven games.  The roster, that once had an array of really good players, Calais Campbell-Jalen Ramsey-Dante Fowler, is threadbare.  The Jaguars are now (2-27) in the last year and a half.

And now they have to start over, with a damaged culture-pysche and flawed talent base.

Money and power corrupt people, change their views on things, and elevate them to a podium looking down on all.  Compare what Meyer became to what Jon Gruden did to himself.

Meyer always had a favorite phrase…”Own It”.  He never did, never addressed his shortcomings, never changed his lifestyle nor attitude after all the leash that his owner gave him.

Don’t judge a cover by the book.  Guess you cannot judge the qualities and depthis of a head coach just based on his won-loss record from somewhere else.

Urban Meyer, good record-bad guy.  Good luck with the rest of your coaching life.

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