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The first act of this Urban Meyer circus, if anyone can recall, was the hiring and then resignation of controversial strength and conditioning trainer Chris Doyle, who is currently involved in a lawsuit for racial discrimination of eight former Iowa Hawkeyes players. It’s worth looking back as this was Meyer’s first major mistake in the NFL, followed by a relevant message he conveyed to the outside world.
“We don’t need a distraction,” Meyer said after Doyle left in February, “Moving forward is in everyone’s best interest.”
Of all the regrets in the NFL, few go deeper than your own words, especially when your behavior is now your team’s biggest story, and the only way to go is to apologize.
We will get to that in a moment. First of all, it is worth recognizing the virtual assembly line of distraction that has been the experience of Urban Meyer. From Doyle’s turnstile job – which has since resulted in Meyer’s subpoena in the discrimination lawsuit – to the public relations signing of Tim Tebow as a 34-year-old tight end. From a $ 300,000 fine for breaking offseason training rules, to dragging out a completely unsuccessful preseason quarterback competition. Not to mention speculation about the USC head coach position (in fairness Meyer didn’t bring it on himself), to play with the use of first-round pick Travis Etienne, a forward balloon, as wide (in fairness, Meyer absolutely brought this on himself).
If Meyer’s first order of business was to keep the Jaguars away from distractions, he has failed miserably and completely like any coach in recent memory.
And that was before this weekend, that Meyer and the Jaguars should have spent finding their good ends after a competitive loss Thursday night to the Cincinnati Bengals. Instead, Meyer skipped the team’s return flight and took his circus back to familiar Ohio territory, complete with a scarlet Buckeyes sweater. This time around, the results exploded in viral cellphone videos on Saturday night, featuring Meyer with a shoulder-length blonde-haired woman who wasn’t his wife, indulging in something that ultimately required an embarrassing apology. The mea culpa was not only about Jaguars ownership, but also about its team. And most important of all, to his wife and family.
“I just apologized to the team and staff for being a distraction,” Meyer said at a press conference on Monday, fixing his shoes as he explained what people had seen on the videos . “Just stupid, so I explained everything that happened and owned it. Just stupid. I shouldn’t be in that kind of position.
If you’ve seen the two available videos, you can judge for yourself how embarrassed Meyer should be. The bigger question is how embarrassed Jaguars ownership is at this point. The Jaguars are now 0-4 and lose 19 straight games. Football is more than enough of a problem to keep him busy, not to mention the rest of the chaos he seems to be wooing.
The reality is as much as the world wants to hammer Meyer as a person, this viral video did not violate the league’s personal conduct policy. A moral boundary in her marriage? It’s up to him and his family to decide. But a terminable offense in this league? Not even close. Even with this video and all the other distractions Meyer created in such a short space of time, it’s impossible to stray from the reality of the NFL: rigid mandates are kept to win and lose, while flexibility is often offered. to the moral compass. .
That’s not to say one can’t impact the other, and that’s what Meyer should be worried about. The more he loses, the less flexible the team will be about a “distraction”. And make no mistake, Meyer’s future definitely rests in the hands of a mid-length blonde. His name is Trevor Lawrence, the most valuable resource this franchise has ever assembled in an NFL Draft.
More than any other result, the 2021 season was always going to be about Lawrence’s development, something that was in troubling territory until Thursday night, when Clemson’s No.1 draft pick arguably had his best game of the season. . It was the kind of game that didn’t fill the stats column, but showed Lawrence’s ability to lead and compete. His evening should have continued on Monday, giving the franchise a little boost.
All this until Urban refuses a return flight and chooses a path to the public relations outhouse.
He will survive it, of course. Let us remember our history of the NFL. It wasn’t that long ago that we were obsessed with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and a legal battle over allegations of solicitation of prostitution (since dismissed for illegal surveillance). Prior to that, it involved an impaired driving arrest of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, who had more than $ 29,000 in cash split between a briefcase and trash bag, along with bottles of drugs on arrangement. And Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – well, let’s just say his tenure has been a buffet of interesting photos or videos that were adopted far more casually than Meyer is familiar with.
And that’s just the team owners. Never mind the litany of gamers, front-office executives or coaches who have had their public misdeeds chronicled in photos or videos. The depth of moral turpitude in this league can often seem bottomless.
Meyer should be embarrassed. Property should expect the apologies it has received. But wins and losses on the pitch have often overtaken those off the pitch. If we pretend they didn’t, the only people we’re cheating on is ourselves.
Meyer will ultimately go up or down depending on the results of his winning column and the growth of his quarterback. If there’s one thing more embarrassing for ownership than anything Meyer has done this season, it’s football failure. And there were plenty of them on video before last weekend.
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