5 Jaguars who were potentially damage by Urban Meyer’s toxic culture
Hindsight is 20/20 but there were signs early in Urban Meyer’s tenure as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars that things weren’t going to work out. It all started when he announced he had hired Chris Doyle as the team’s director of sports performance.
Why Meyer thought that a coach with a history of making insensitive comments was fit to work with players is anyone’s guess. In the end, he back down and cut ties with Doyle as soon as he got backlash for the hire. However, that was far from the only blunder Meyer was going to be involved in during his tenure in Jacksonville. In fact, he was just getting started.
Meyer often belittled his assistants and even questioned their coaching acumen. Moreover, he allegedly called his coaching staff losers. The former head coach later denied the report and simply said that he holds his assistants to high standards.
Then, there’s the interaction with kicker Josh Lambo. Meyer allegedly kicked Lambo and told him to f*cking make his kicks”. When he was asked why he did that, he said he did it because “he was the head coach and he could f*cking do whatever he wanted”. Again, Meyer refused to acknowledge this happened but where there’s smoke, there’s fire and there’s no way every single report of tension building in Jacksonville was false.
The fact that Jaguars owner Shad Khan felt compelled to cut ties with Meyer after less than a year on the job goes on to show how bad he was failing at his job and how dysfunctional things had become under his watch. Looking back, these five players might have been potentially damaged by Urban Meyer’s toxic culture.
1. Jaguars player that was damaged by Urban Meyer – Myles Jack, LB.
Head coaches are supposed to know their players’ strengths and weaknesses but Meyer was often oblivious to things he should have known by heart. Linebacker Myles Jack has been a key cog in the Jaguars’ defense over the last six years and one of their best players.
Having said that, Jack is not at his best when he has to call defensive plays. Meyer didn’t seem to care as he had him wear the green dot early in the 2021 season. The then-head coach eventually took away the responsibility from the linebacker but this incident proved he wasn’t familiarized with his personnel and was figuring things on the fly.
Had Meyer spent some time learning about his players, this would have never happened.