Jaguars news: Josh McDaniels tries to give Urban Meyer a run for worst NFL coach ever

The Las Vegas Raiders fired head coach Josh McDaniels, along with general manager Dave Zigler) at 12:00 a.m. PT/3:00 a.m. AM for vastly underachieving. Nearly two years ago, the Jacksonville Jaguars also kicked Urban Meyer to the curb very late at night.

While there's no doubt both McDaniels and Meyer left their respective teams in shambles, both were dreadful for different reasons, which begs the question, who was the worst of the two?

The case for Jaguars HC Urban Meyer as the worst ever

Meyer was dubbed a program builder in college, winning national championships with Florida and Ohio State. This luster prompted Jaguars owner Shad Khan to aggressively court Meyer without looking at all his baggage and red flags. To nobody's surprise, Meyer's tenure was a resounding disaster. When Meyer brought in Chris Doyle — known for allegedly abusing players and making racist remarks — to his coaching staff, that should've been a sign of things to come.

During his brief stint in Jacksonville, Meyer motivated his players and staff by routinely threatening them. The embattled head coach was routinely in the news for the wrong reasons. He benched running back James Robinson for no reason and got into a heated argument with veteran Marvin Jones Jr. Just recently, safety Andrew Wingard talked about the time Meyer called him on the phone and demanded he apologize for calling him a rookie head coach.

Meyer was equally bad off the field. Following a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday Night Football, he decided not to fly back with the team and stay in Ohio to "spend time with his grandkids." It turns out he went out and was caught on tape getting frisky a woman who wasn't his wife Shelley. The straw that broke the camel's back was when Josh Lambo claimed Meyer kicked him during warm-ups and used expletives to demand he made his kicks.

Not long after Lambo's comments, the Jaguars fired Urban Meyer. And just like the Raiders with Josh McDaniels, they waited until midnight to part ways with the head coach. Looking back, it's possible that the organization would've shrugged Meyer's poor behavior under the carpet if he were winning, but he wasn't. He mustered a measly two wins in 13 games and there weren't any signs Jacksonville was going to turn the corner.

It took the Jaguars a while to recover from the Urban Meyer debacle but they've gotten back on track under Doug Pederson's ship. They made the playoffs and won the AFC South last year and their 6-2 record is currently tied with the Kansas City Chiefs for the best in the league, so it's fair to say that things have turned out to be fine for the Jags.

The case for Raiders HC Josh McDaniels as the worst ever

Although Josh McDaniels wasn't nearly as controversial off the field as Urban Meyer, he was pretty bad in his own way. The Las Vegas Raiders should've known better though. He became the head coach of the Denver Broncos in the late 2010s. He came crashing down in just his second season and didn't return for a third.

McDaniels spent most of the 2010s as the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. In 2018, he was offered the head coaching job with the Indianapolis Colts and accepted. However, he left them hanging at the last minute. McDaniels stayed put with the Pats until he got hired by the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022. He took over a team that had made the playoffs the year before, so he might've probably thought he would be able to pull off the feat again.

What McDaniels failed to see was that the Raiders made the playoffs in 2021 thanks to a streak of luck to end the year, which led him and Dave Ziegler to vastly overestimate the state of the team they inherited. Instead of replenishing à roster that the previous regime left devoid of talent and depth, they made a couple of splash moves thinking they could contend in 2022. Their approach blew up in their face, as Las Vegas went 6-11.

Add McDaniels' poor skills to manage all phases of the game, his lack of accountability, and his ability to consistently alienate his best players and it's easy to see why Raiders owner Mark Davis decided to pull the plug on him. In 2024, Las Vegas will look for their third head coach (not counting interim Rich Bisaccia) in three years.

Urban Meyer - Josh McDaniels faceoff: Who was the worst of the two?

You know Urban Meyer deserve a high spot in the echelon of worst NFL coaches ever when he became the first head coach since Pete McCulley in 1978 to not finish his first season. You could point out that Bobby Petrino didn't finish his first year with the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 but he resigned, he wasn't given the boot.

Either way, Meyer consistently got the spotlight for not being qualified to run an NFL team. That said, his off-field shenanigans are the reason he deserves the top spot as the worst coach ever. Meanwhile, most, if not all of McDaniels' failures came on the field. Do you know how bad McDaniels was at the helm? Josh Dubow of the Associate Press put together a list of all his "accomplishments".

Among Josh McDaniels' worst accomplishments was losing to the Jeff Saturday-led Indianapolis Colts in his NFL debut in 2022 even though he had no experience coaching. Also last year, Las Vegas blew leads of 20 and 17 points to the Arizona Cardinals and the Jacksonville Jaguars in Weeks 1 and 9, respectively.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Raiders lost to a pretty bad Chicago Bears team with Tyson Bagent, an undrafted Division II quarterback, as their starter in Week 7. Basically, Josh McDaniels' was the embodiment of Murphy's Law. If things can get worse, they will. They did during his stint with the Raiders, which will most likely be his last ever as a head coach in the NFL.

In the end, this is a close one, so you could say Urban Meyer was the worst coach off the field and Josh McDaniel was the worst on it. That feels like a fair conclusion because neither one deserves to coach at the NFL level ever again.

Here are other recent Jaguars stories you may also enjoy: