- The Jacksonville Jaguars fired head coach Urban Meyer late Wednesday night after just 13 games.
- Among countless other things, Meyer has been criticized for the poor job he’s done developing rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
- Twitter has been coming hot and heavy with reaction to Meyer’s dismissal.
There’s plenty of reasons for Jacksonville Jaguars players, fans and staff to be glad that the short-but-still-too-long Urban Meyer nightmare is now over. Mayer amazingly ‘wore out his welcome’ during preseason but managed to hang on to his job until late Wednesday night when team owner Shad Khan dropped the hammer right around midnight. The ‘last straw’ was a report that Meyer had kicked former kicker Josh Lambo during preseason game warmups. More problematic–when Lambo took exception to being kicked by his head coach Meyer responded ‘I’m the head ball coach, I’ll kick you whenever the f–k I want.’
Meyer learned that unlike college football, coaches in the NFL *aren’t* able to kick players ‘whenever the f–k they want’. Although the Lambo story forced Jags’ owner Khan’s hand to some degree it wasn’t even mentioned in the statement announcing that Meyer was out:
Darrell Bevell will serve as interim head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars for the balance of the 2021 season. Darrell succeeds Urban Meyer. After deliberation over many weeks and a thorough analysis of the entirety of Urban’s tenure with our team, I am bitterly disappointed to arrive at the conclusion that an immediate change is imperative for everyone. I informed Urban of the change this evening. As I stated in October, regaining our trust and respect was essential. Regrettably, it did not happen.
Trent Baalke continues as our general manager and will work with Darrell to ensure that our team will be inspired and competitive while representing Jacksonville proudly over our final four games of the season. In the spirit of closure and recharging our players, staff and fan base, I will not comment further until some point following the conclusion of the NFL
Meyer was lucky to still have a job after the videos of him doing whatever it was with a woman he was not married to in a C-Bus restaurant that he owns. After that fiasco went viral, Khan made clear that Meyer had a significant burden of proof to meet if he wanted to retain the team’s trust and continue coaching in the NFL:
“I have addressed this matter with Urban. Specifics of our conversation will be held in confidence. What I will say is his conduct last weekend was inexcusable. I appreciate Urban’s remorse, which I believe is sincere. Now, he must regain our trust and respect. That will require a personal commitment from Urban to everyone who supports, represents or plays for our team. I am confident he will deliver.”
Clearly, Khan made a mistake when he hired Meyer. Not simply the ‘mistake’ of hiring a bad football coach. The Jags are in desperate need of a complete rebuild and Meyer was a guy that took a bad situation and made it worse. Twitter has been killing it reacting to Meyer’s firing:
These might be my favorites:
The most bizarre response came from Urban Meyer’s daughter Gisela who defended her father but went completely off the rails otherwise. She suggested that he was a victim of a ‘left wing conspiracy’ calling it ‘fake news’ and threatening to ‘go to war’ over the media coverage of her dad. She continued her mystifying channeling of Trump with this head scratcher of a comment:
‘The world hates any platform we have’
Not sure which ‘we’ she is referring to–the Meyer family? Bullies and blowhards? Hard to suggest that Meyer is the victim of political correctness or ‘cancel culture’ when there is near unanimity that this was a good move. You can’t ‘spin’ a 2-11 record.
