The hits keep on coming for disgraced former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer. In a story on The Athletic, players and staffers paint a picture of a tyrant who didn’t know prominent NFL players and belittled his own players and coaches. Urban Meyer is not a good person and we shouldn’t try and pretend otherwise.
Meyer couldn’t even last for one NFL season before the Jaguars fired him with the team stumbling at 2-11. Not only was the team losing on the field but the culture and atmosphere he created was often described as toxic.
Days after a player missed an assignment in a preseason game Meyer was still so enraged he threatened to cut the entire position group, and implied if he did so their lives would be over as they couldn’t do anything else.
“And do you know what would happen if I cut you guys?” Meyer said, according to four people in the room. “You couldn’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour.”
Jacksonville wasn’t the first time we’ve seen or heard about abhorrent conduct from Meyer. He allowed a known domestic abuse incident with one of his coaches to go unreported while head coach at The Ohio State University. He’s been caught lying publicly multiple times, and his tenure at the University of Florida was littered with off-field incidents involving his players.
Still, the events at Jacksonville were on another level.
“The most toxic environment I’ve ever been a part of,” a veteran member of the football operations staff said. “By far. Not even close.”
He repeatedly mocked players’ intelligence levels. Particularly his Black players. When wide receiver Josh Brown ran an incorrect route during a practice, he and rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence worked on the route and Meyer told Lawrence he had to go slow for Brown.
“Hey, Trevor, you’ve got to slow it down for him,” Meyer said, according to sources. “These boys from the South, their transcripts ain’t right.”
Sources also said Meyer was not prepared to serve as a head coach in the NFL and was not familiar with star players on other teams around the league, including: 49ers receiver Deebo Samuel, Seahawks safety Jamal Adams and Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year.
“Who’s this 99 guy on the Rams?” Meyer asked one staffer during the season, according to a source. “I’m hearing he might be a problem for us.”
Nothing about the environment in Jacksonville under Meyer was professional, collaborative or frankly positive for players or coaches.
“The players got it bad when it came to him talking to us,” a veteran player said, “but I believe the coaches got it worse.”
Meyer allegedly referred to himself as a winner and his assistant coaches as losers and would ask them to defend their résumés in a public setting.
“You’ve got players in fear that they’re going to lose their jobs,” wide receiver D.J. Chark said. “You’ve got coaches who he belittled in front of us, and I can only imagine what he was doing behind closed doors. I’m surprised he lasted that long, to be honest with you.”
Meyer is already trying to rehabilitate his image and is back in Columbus, Ohio, working with a nonprofit foundation led by his former OSU quarterback Cardale Jones and Brian Schottenstein, a well-known Columbus developer and OSU graduate.
Meyer is toxic and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near athletes until he has demonstrated a fundamental change in who he is as a person. But something tells us he’ll do this little stint, stay relatively quiet and out of the media cycle, and before long someone will convince themselves he’s worth the risk. Despite the mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise.
