Urban Meyer's puzzling comments about Georgia don't match failed stint with Jaguars

The Jacksonville Jaguars are currently a bad team, having lost four games to start the 2024 season. But as underwhelming as they are right now, they'll never reach Urban Meyer-level of ugliness. During his lone year at the helm, he managed to turn the Jags upside down. Fast forward to 2024, and Meyer's made comments that don't match his troubled tenure in Jacksonville.

Alabama beat Georgia, but the Bulldogs managed to make it interesting, erasing a 23-point deficit and coming close to mounting a comeback. They ultimately lost 41-34, but it looked, for a brief moment, like they were going to pull it off. This made Meyer talk about how he would have inspired players if he were in charge.

"It all depends on the team. I'm getting fired up. So if I got me Mark Ingram and some of those kind of like war daddies, Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast. "I am grabbing their shirts and say, 'Listen, I need you, pal, we used to say when I need you to the most.' You gave us your very best. That was a saying that we had. I don't need you when we're up by 40 points. I could care less what you do, go sit on the bench when we're getting bloodied up right now, I need you to go rally."

"Because there's some guys in the locker room, Mark, that we were not ready for this, right? They were not ready for that second half. And so you rally your alphas and, I mean, get in their jug now, yeah, and say, 'this is going to get real bad unless you guys decide to nut up now and get this [expletive] going'."

These remarks would sound great if they were coming from Andy Reid or Bill Belichick — two of the most successful coaches in the NFL in recent years — not someone with such a shady track record as Meyer.

Granted, Meyer racked up a 187-32 record over 17 seasons at the college level. On top of that, he won three national championships. However you look at it, those are noteworthy achievements. On the other hand, the path of destruction he left at every stop isn't discussed nearly enough.

At Florida, at least 31 of Meyer's players were arrested. While he couldn't supervise every one of them, it's fair to say that discipline was severely lagging in the Gators locker room. Once they began losing he abruptly retired citing health issues. However, he was hired at Ohio State less than two years later. Things weren't much different.

Meyer was reportedly aware of wide receivers coach Zach Smith's domestic violence allegations but denied any knowledge of them. That led to a three-game suspension and his eventual resignation.

But despite all his red flags, owner Shad Khan heavily courted Meyer to coach the Jags. Along the way, he forgot (or chose not) to do due diligence. The decision backfired, as Jacksonville turned into a hot mess on and off the field.

After several controversies, Khan decided to fire Meyer less than a year after hiring him. Since kicking him to the curb, the Jaguars have gone one to post back-to-back winning seasons.

Urban Meyer talked the big talk but failed with the Jaguars

The Jacksonville Jaguars hired Urban Meyer because they wanted him to turn them into a perennial contender, but that's not how things played out. During his short stint in Duval, the embattled head coach managed to sink the Jags even lower than they were. This is noteworthy because they went 1-15 the year prior, so you need to be a particular kind of bad to pull off the feat.

Say what you want about Doug Pederson. He shouldn't have called out players publicly after the loss to the Houston Texans in Week 4. However, he didn't threaten them or his assistants like Meyer did.

That's right, Meyer told players that if they weren't in the NFL, they would be working $15-dollar jobs. Similarly, he demanded his coaches prove they were winners than him. The trouble is that he didn't walk the talk. He was overwhelmed by the level of competition in the pros.

On top of that, Meyer didn't know opposing players' names or how much his own played in a game. Leaving aside that he had no idea what he was doing in the NFL, he's the only NFL coach who's been caught dancing improperly at a nightclub with a woman who wasn't his wife Shelley when he told the team that he was going to spend time with his grandkids.

The point is that Urban Meyer was a dreadful head coach and whatever he says about football should be taken with a grain of salt.

More Jaguars analysis here: