Jaguars fire Urban Meyer
- Thread starter Mystic Merlin
- Start date
Leftwich is Bienemy without the baggage — an accomplished OC who worked in the shadow of a successful, offensive-minded head coach. But I think his past in Jacksonville is a bug rather than a feature, both for him and the franchise. Hiring a guy who is remembered locally as a draft bust isn’t the right way for Khan to reingratiate himself with the fan base, and it doesn’t seem like the best situation for Leftwich either.
Congressman Urban Meyer (R-OH) does have a ring to it.
Edit: this is not a political post! This is just an observation about how guys like Meyer can fail upwards!
Edit: this is not a political post! This is just an observation about how guys like Meyer can fail upwards!
Hmm, very interesting idea with McDaniels. That could make a great deal of sense to him.
If you are going to kick the kicker, you'd best send him headlong through the uprights.
Congressman is a move up from Jags coach, but I'm not sure it's a move up from coach of a large state U
McD was smart enough to avoid garbage ownership in Indy. Khan isn't that guy, but he has run a poor football organization for quite some time. Lots of examples of bad judgment. If I'm Josh, I'd need to hear evidence of a Damascus moment before I'd even pick up the phone, stud QB or no stud QB.
What stands out on Leftwich's resume beyond him being a Jaguar legend?
He began as an intern on Arian's staff for the Cardinals in 2016. He quickly progressed from intern, to QB coach, to OC in 2017. He primarily presided over the corpse of Carson Palmer as an intern/QB coach. They had the 6th ranked offense in 2016, then 25th in 2017 (Palmer was hurt and Blaine Gabbert started some games). He was promoted to OC prior to 2018 (Ariansgonel; Wilks in as HC) and in his 1 year as Cardinals OC, they were the 32nd ranked offense with Josh Rosen getting the bulk of the starts at QB. Rosen likely just sucked so perhaps Leftwich was doomed from the start, but that's his only real data point of him working with a young QB. Leftwich was fired by Arizona, but hooked up with Arians again in Tampa Bay. In 2019, Leftwich's offense ranked 17th with Jameis Winston at the helm and featured a record number of turnovers. Winston has always had a reputation of being a turnover machine, but that year was out of control. His 30 picks were 12 more than his previous career high. He was picked off on almost 5% of his throws. How much of that can be blamed on Winston and how much on coaching/Leftwich? Then Brady arrives and the offense turns into a machine. Obviously Leftwich deserves some (a lot?) of the credit for the Bucs success, but the point I'm getting at is that I'm not sure I'd be ready to entrust Leftwich with the development of my franchise QB in Trevor Lawrence. On the surface, he doesn't really have experience developing a young QB. If I was Khan, my top criteria for a new coach is finding someone who has experience developing young quarterbacks.
He began as an intern on Arian's staff for the Cardinals in 2016. He quickly progressed from intern, to QB coach, to OC in 2017. He primarily presided over the corpse of Carson Palmer as an intern/QB coach. They had the 6th ranked offense in 2016, then 25th in 2017 (Palmer was hurt and Blaine Gabbert started some games). He was promoted to OC prior to 2018 (Ariansgonel; Wilks in as HC) and in his 1 year as Cardinals OC, they were the 32nd ranked offense with Josh Rosen getting the bulk of the starts at QB. Rosen likely just sucked so perhaps Leftwich was doomed from the start, but that's his only real data point of him working with a young QB. Leftwich was fired by Arizona, but hooked up with Arians again in Tampa Bay. In 2019, Leftwich's offense ranked 17th with Jameis Winston at the helm and featured a record number of turnovers. Winston has always had a reputation of being a turnover machine, but that year was out of control. His 30 picks were 12 more than his previous career high. He was picked off on almost 5% of his throws. How much of that can be blamed on Winston and how much on coaching/Leftwich? Then Brady arrives and the offense turns into a machine. Obviously Leftwich deserves some (a lot?) of the credit for the Bucs success, but the point I'm getting at is that I'm not sure I'd be ready to entrust Leftwich with the development of my franchise QB in Trevor Lawrence. On the surface, he doesn't really have experience developing a young QB. If I was Khan, my top criteria for a new coach is finding someone who has experience developing young quarterbacks.
I would think Josh is probably #1 on their list and likely a done deal before year end. Trevor was considered the next Peyton Manning and one year under the train wreck of Urban isn’t going to tarnish him at all. Would expect the Jags job to be extremely attractive to many, but an OC with success and experience should be their priority.
If we’re doing a pool, I’ll take Georgia as Meyer’s next landing spot. They’ll fire Kirby Smart next year after he loses to Bama again.
Curious - do you not think the state of the organization will give someone like McDaniels pause? You are likely correct about the appeal of Lawrence but that club has been a mess for a while now and it seems bigger than the coaching situation.
Yeah, this is the Sacramento Kings of the NFL. If Lawrence weren’t there, Josh would probably have zero interest. Lawrence being there probably helps but I’d have some real concerns with Khan as my owner. Josh knows better than anyone about the value of a stable ownership situation. It’s probably why he turned down Indy despite the presence of Luck.
The main issue has been who Khan has selected to run the football side. It started in year one with the bizarre decision to retain Gene Smith and allow him to select a new coach after being a horrendous GM. He than went with Caldwell (seemed like an ok choice at the time) who, if you factor in the financial resources at his disposal ( Khan vs "poor owner" Weaver), the new salary cap rollover, rookie cap scale, unreal draft position every year except one, may have actually been worse than Smith. Which is saying something.
Throw in bringing in Coughlin 80 years too late and add Urban/Baalke, and it has just been a mess.
I expect a McDaniels Hire (which I have been hoping for years) would be a package deal with new GM and assurances they have complete control. However, there is one more elephant in the room, that could give any new hire pause, is the son, Tony "Chief Football Strategy Officer" (Mr Analytics) who should stick to his wrestling venture.
It was 100% obvious this was going to happen as soon as he hired Chris Doyle and stood up for him by talking about how much he had vetted him.
Bottom line is that Urban is, and always has been, a massive piece of shit. He never takes responsibility for anything and instead chooses to throw everyone else around him under the bus.
It’s karma that his reputation has been completely ruined (to the point he probably won’t even be able to get back on TV).
Was he though? He had one foot in the door before changing his mind. And the reporting I saw after the fact did not really allude to a problem with ownership, it was more about compatibility and roles between the GM and coach.
https://www.si.com/nfl/patriots/gm-report/why-mcdaniels-actually-ditched-colts
My analogy is Josh seems fine with someone else shopping for the groceries, but wants to feel confidence that their grocery lists are almost identical and he wants the GM to dropoff the groceries then leave the house until dinner is ready.
Yes, this is what I think matters more to Josh than who the owner is.
Lawrence offers some thoughts:
"He's very even keel," Lawrence said of Bevell, who also served as the Detroit Lions' interim head coach for the final five games of the 2020 season. "Always the same person never gets too high or too low. That's something that I respect and that I can level with.
"So I'd say that's the biggest thing that we need right now. Someone that's consistent and just to move forward and push past it."
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32884789/jacksonville-jaguars-qb-trevor-lawrence-says-coaching-change-gives-locker-room-focus
Then there's this:
"He's very even keel," Lawrence said of Bevell, who also served as the Detroit Lions' interim head coach for the final five games of the 2020 season. "Always the same person never gets too high or too low. That's something that I respect and that I can level with.
"So I'd say that's the biggest thing that we need right now. Someone that's consistent and just to move forward and push past it."
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32884789/jacksonville-jaguars-qb-trevor-lawrence-says-coaching-change-gives-locker-room-focus
Then there's this:
An announcer at practice?
Normally when a rich dad has a midlife crisis he goes and kicks the tires on a Lambo, but I guess Meyer’s done that already
This is so amazingly hypocritical. When my sister was a student football trainer and they played Clemson, 90% of the Clemson players were majoring in lawncare management or turf science or whatever. He doesn't give a damn about the players' education and it's incredibly disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Ummm
“Adults manipulating young men”
isn’t that the whole point of recruiting? Even before the transfer Portal and NIL.
like coaches go to a recruits house and try to win over the player and family to come to their school.
DABO is just angry that The playing field is level.
This is a hideously bad take, on multiple levels.
All of you Notre Dame haters should be reminded that the Irish job was Meyer's for the taking back in the day, and he turned it down. You think the schadenfreude is thick now, just imagine how much worse it would be had that hypothetical come to pass...
You're just mad because I pointed out Kelce hasn't been that bad and Russell Wilson was not a big loss.
Because if you're argument against my comment that Dabo can't win without an elite QB, coming back with, "But he won with Watson too," is quite a toothless argument.
LOL what?
Uh....here's what you actually said, to which I actually responded:
"Swinney also needs to show he can win without Trevor Lawrence."
And then I pointed out that he won with Watson too. Literally, he's already shown he can win without *Trevor Lawrence*. If you later changed your argument to "he can't win without an elite QB", then I would still have said we don't know that, but obviously I would have agreed that Watson was an elite QB.
I mean, in post #123 of this thread you actually said, "Fair enough" to my point about Watson, then changed the argument to be broader, related to "elite QBs", not just Lawrence.
So why now you're responding once again to that same post of mine as if you didn't already respond to it yesterday morning with "Fair enough" is baffling to me. Maybe you forgot that you already replied to this post of mine and that we already had a back and forth about it?
There are few people more disingenuous and selfish than college football coaches.
Rodger Sherman of The Ringer with the top 10 lowlights from Urbie's all-too-brief NFL coaching tenure:
https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/12/16/22840520/urban-meyer-fired-jacksonville-jaguars-worst-moments
The Jaguars fired Meyer on Thursday, ending one of the worst coaching stints in NFL history. To understand how we got here, let’s go through his low points in Jacksonville—from the bad to the baffling to the truly appalling.
https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/12/16/22840520/urban-meyer-fired-jacksonville-jaguars-worst-moments
The Jaguars fired Meyer on Thursday, ending one of the worst coaching stints in NFL history. To understand how we got here, let’s go through his low points in Jacksonville—from the bad to the baffling to the truly appalling.
"Its about education" says college football coaches who before the transfer portal and the NIL were making millions off players who got paid nothing, and were free to bolt to whatever college gave them the most bags of money to be their head coach
I'd argue that parity is going to get even worse with NIL. It's going to become a necessity in big time CFB for a HC to be able to funnel big time money to players. I could easily see 3* and 4* prefer to sit on the bench at Texas for $100k rather than start at some other school which isn't paying players.
Ohio State head coach to US House of Representatives is not upwards.
edit: Jose beat me to it...
That's a possibility, especially for players whose prime motivator is getting the money sooner, even if it comes with the cost of not getting more later (if getting buried on the depth chart negatively affects pro prospects). But parity isn't the goal of NIL.
The plurailty, if not the majority, reasoning behind all objections to NIL comes from those who dont want to surrender the control over players' lives that comes with players not being paid.
I don't know how many players (even 5* guys) are going to be able to get NIL deals outside of a bribe to play for said team. It's going to become Semi-Pro football, and managing the "payroll" is going to be part of the coach's responsibilities.
Smart players who are thinking long-term rather than those tempted by an instant 100k, maybe.
This might be a different thread in a different forum, but my rough googling tells me that ~5% of 3-star recruits are drafted by the NFL. Given the median NFL salary of 860k and the average career length of 3.3 years, this seems like a pretty close decision to me.
Lawyers….assemble! I rarely side with owners on anything but I’ll be rooting for Jags big time in this one.
Jags going with the it wasn't one thing, but a series of things strategy
A source within the organization said the Jaguars' reasons for withholding the remaining guarantees are not tied to one specific incident -- but rather a cumulation of instances that Jacksonville's officials believe justified the firing.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32894745/sources-jacksonville-jaguars-say-football-coach-urban-meyer-fired-cause-intend-pay-rest-contract
A source within the organization said the Jaguars' reasons for withholding the remaining guarantees are not tied to one specific incident -- but rather a cumulation of instances that Jacksonville's officials believe justified the firing.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32894745/sources-jacksonville-jaguars-say-football-coach-urban-meyer-fired-cause-intend-pay-rest-contract
Khan knew what he was getting when he hired Meyer. He chose to ignore the bad character because of Meyer's winning history. Paying Meyer 50-60 million dollars for 13 games might just be the lesson that Khan needs to learn. Once Meyer has his money, I hope his wife divorces him and takes it all.
Urban is a piece of shit, but Kahn gave him the contract and should be paying up. I don't like this precedent. Meyer may have injured the brand, but it was due to Kahns hiring blunder.
Meyer took the deal because of the security tied to it. Again, he's an asshole, but he wouldn't have left the college ranks and risked his entire reputation for a one year gig.
Pay him his money and have him go away.
Meyer took the deal because of the security tied to it. Again, he's an asshole, but he wouldn't have left the college ranks and risked his entire reputation for a one year gig.
Pay him his money and have him go away.
Kahn would be an idiot to blindly pay Meyer 50 million without doing this. At the end of the day there will be a negotiated settlement for something less than 50 million. Shit like this happens every single day. A contract does not contain a moral obligation to obide by its terms. Kahn thinks he has some leverage here due to the fact that nobody is on Meyer’s side of this thing from a PR perspective. He can and should use that to negotiate a lower buyout.
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He didn’t leave the college ranks for this job. He retired from Ohio State in 2018. And he’s already generationally wealthy from his college career, and his reputation was already shitty. Meyer isn’t losing anything here other than some money that he doesn’t really deserve.
And there is no precedent being set here. As I mentioned above, this is just business. If anything Kahn would be an idiot for paying Meyer 50 million bucks for a job he seemed to be trying to get fired from.
Really jumping to defend Urban Meyer? He kicked a fucking player. Why do you feel so strongly about assholes getting the benefit of the doubt?