Jaguars

Owner Shad Khan Not Considering Firing Urban Meyer Yet, But Rocky NFL Start Continues

October 10, 2021

According to Jason La Canfora, Jaguars owner Shad Khan is not considering moving on from HC Urban Meyer at this time.

However, a litany of issues with Meyer’s start to his first year in the NFL has many pessimistic about how much longer he’ll last. That includes last week’s fiasco with infidelity and skipping the team flight, plus an ongoing NFLPA investigation into comments about cutting players who weren’t vaccinated, per La Canfora.

Meyer has had issues connecting and building trust with players and coaches since arriving, sources tell La Canfora. In the immediate aftermath of last weekend, Meyer hurt himself further by not addressing things head-on to the team until Wednesday, pushing the burden to assistant coaches before then.

When he did apologize, La Canfora says it came off as insincere to many.

“He’s not coming back from this,” said a league source close to several Jaguars players. “There wasn’t much confidence in him in that locker room before this went down. Now? It’s over. Guys are laughing at him. He’s lost any respect he may have had. They think he quit on them.”

“You can’t make morality a central theme of your leadership message, and then do this,” added an agent for one Jaguars starter. “It undermines everything. You can’t be holier than thou and do as I say and then do this. You don’t get up from something like this. These players see right through him. I can’t believe they didn’t fire him.”

La Canfora adds the NFLPA is still investigating comments Meyer made about vaccination status playing a role in roster cuts. However, that’s a lengthy process that could stretch into 2022.

The player’s association is looking for communication records that could show whether that was the case. If so, Meyer and the Jaguars could be facing fines or other sanctions.

Meyer, 56, got his start in coaching in 1986 as a graduate assistant at Ohio State. He worked as an assistant coach at Illinois State, Colorado State and Notre Dame before getting his first head coaching position at Bowling Green in 2001.

Meyer moved on to become the head coach at Utah in 2003.

In 2005, he was hired as the head coach at Florida before retiring due to health reasons in 2010. Meyer came out of retirement to take the lead job at Ohio State in 2012 and was in that position until 2018 before retiring again citing health reasons.

It’s worth mentioning while Meyer has been hospitalized for chest pains and migraines, both of his health-related retirements have followed off-the-field controversies, including how he handled a domestic violence accusation for one of his assistant coaches at Ohio State.

The Jaguars hired Meyer out of a TV analyst job to be their head coach in 2021.

As a college head coach, Meyer has a career coaching record of 187-32 and has won three national titles at two different schools.

Entering Week 5, Jacksonville is 0-4 under Meyer.