Bortles threw for 376 yards and 4 TDs in the 2018 game, and, since then, the most memorable thing about him is the mentions he got in The Good Place.
Jaguars fire Urban Meyer
- Thread starter Mystic Merlin
- Start date
I understood you to say any contract to a coach should be paid regardless of whether cause for firing exists. I don’t happen to agree, but the lawyers certainly will file in (ha?) to sort it out.
His contract almost certainly had a morality clause. He didn’t take the job for any sort of security he didn’t already have. He’s entitled to shit if he really kicked a player.
That's quite a bold statement. You're confident there's no way he receives any of his remaining salary because he kicked someone in the leg a little hard? A story that he denies?
I get that you're of the belief that anyone who is an asshole no longer has any rights and they no longer deserve fairness or equality. I've seen that view espoused more and more frequently on these boards, and I understand that it's somehow become an unchallenged and allowed opinion. That's fine. I'm of the opinion that he's an asshole, he deserved to lose his job and be cast into shame, and that any school that hires him after this deserves all the derision it receives. Those are his punishments for his actions, and they are all well deserved.
I also believe there was a contract signed, Meyer didn't act in bad faith (he was just a shitty person and a shitty coach), and if Kahn wants to fire him, he should pay the full repercussions of making a hire that was universally panned as a bad idea at the time.
Meyer being a fucking donkey doesn't void the contract. A coach lightly kicking a player (5 on a scale of 10, right?) doesn't crack the top 5000 shitty things a football head coach has done. And he's denied that event, which is another hurdle in the legal process.
So, yeah. I think Kahn gave a long term contract to a shitty person, and as long as Meyer was trying to do his job, then the contract should be paid in full. Kahn shouldn't be let off the hook because he ignored all common sense by hiring an asshole.
Are we no longer allowed to look at things impartially? Meyer can be an asshole and still should be paid the money owed to him. They aren't mutually exclusive.
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Meyer had a sit down interview with NFLN where unsurprisingly he denied all the accusations against him.
More from the interview at the above
https://www.nfl.com/news/former-jaguars-head-coach-urban-meyer-discusses-his-firing
More from the interview at the above
They'll each lawyer up, Meyer will get a decent % of the outstanding $, Khan will save some $, and the lawyers will make out as well after a settlement.
Unless there is something really egregious that hasn't been publicized yet and Khan truly wants this to go to trial, he's probably just pissed Urban was a turd and wants to drag things out while saving a few million in the process.
If Meyer has a contract that allows him to do shit like kicking players, he'll get all his money and be fine. If not, he won't. The lawyers will sort it out.
The idea that he should get paid regardless seems weird to me. Consequences for bad behavior can be levied with fairness and equality.
The idea that he should get paid regardless seems weird to me. Consequences for bad behavior can be levied with fairness and equality.
You have no clue if Meyer kicking a player voids a contract unless you’ve read the contract.
Your understanding of how these kind of things work in the real world is ridiculous. This is a negotiation. Kahn didn’t get to a point in his life where he owns an NFL team by pissing away 50 million dollars when he doesn’t have to.
Kahn also hired Urban Meyer and is currently presiding over a football team that is a dumpster fire and a laughingstock of the NFL. He might be stellar in business, but in football related matters he is not good.
Oh, I forgot about the "kicking players" clause that teams have been putting in place.
Morality clauses are vague by the nature of the topic. There's a reason it doesn't get triggered more often.
You don't know shit about what I do or don't know about the real world. Hell, you dont even have the ability to read all the posts in the last page of this thread, as I already stated I expect the parties to come to a mutual agreement on payment.
I'll put as much weight into your opinion as you have actually put into reading the thread.
This is an insane misrepresentation of what he said. In any case, maybe you’ll be proved right and he’ll be paid all the money. But maybe he won’t. There is a contract in place and the legal system will determine who gets what.
I would argue that the ability to understand and evaluate options in a situation like this is not in any way related to the ability to hire a GM or run a competent football organization. This is pretty simple, the contract Kahn signed with Meyer says he owes Meyer a shit- ton of money and Kahn has legit arguments that he shouldn’t pay that money. Any argument that Kahn should pay the full amount is asinine. That doesnt make Kahn a good owner for the Jags. It makes him not an idiot in general, with lawyers who are not idiots.
It's not.
He's alluding to content from V&N and using it as a springboard here. Which should be an obvious no-no as its, like, the easiest way to drag V&N into this forum.
More specifically, he's using vastly different situations and making sweeping assumptions about them to paint a certain picture of me.
You may have been missing that context, so figured I'd provide it.
Ive read the thread. You said Kahn should pay up. You were worried about the precedent that might be set if he doesn’t (whatever that might be). You are absolutely certain that Kahn doesnt have an argument that Meyer can be terminated for cause. Yet you agree this will end with a negotiated settlement. Ok then.
They didn’t fire him for that though. They were told in August and swept it away.
Urban deserves to be paid. I would take his case way faster than I would take the Jags’ case. He is a piece of crap but they fired him for being a shitty coach and that is exactly what he negotiated a guaranteed contract for.
This assumes there is not something that is truly cause for firing that we do not know about.
They will settle I imagine.
Yes. Both sides benefit greatly from a negotiated settlement. Meyer doesn't have the resources - and in all likelihood, the desire and stamina - for a long, drawn out court battle. Kahn wants to recoup some of his losses, but would have to have some slam dunk evidence to trigger a morality clause. There was a video of Meyer with a girl dancing on him. Someone said Meyer kind of kicked him, Meyer denies it. Im not a lawyer, but I'd seriously doubt thats enough to null his contract. Had Lambo filed assault charges or something? Maybe. I dunno.
But that's it. There's no other evidence I'm aware of that would come close to triggering a morality clause.
Meyer gets to wash his hands of all this and avoid a long legal battle, Kahn gets $10-20M back.
So, yeah, I get it. But, I still think Kahn is wrong and that Meyer should be paid out. And that has nothing to do with how much of a piece of shit Meyer is.
I agree they will settle.
That said, Meyer’s approach would and should be grounds for dismissal at most companies in the real world and would probably get the firm sued by his underlings
Meyer absolutely has the resources to fight this if he wanted to. He is an Uber-millionaire and could absolutely take this all the way if he wanted to.
Beyond that, maybe we are talking past each other and/or I am reacting to your concern about precedent setting. This is just how these things work themselves out. Kahn hired Meyer, yes, but I don’t think it is fair to say he fired him just because they arent winning. Paying him 50 mill just was never going to happen, and there’s nothing morally wrong with that and theres no reason to feel bad for Meyer because he won’t get his full pay day. The end of business relationships like this are always negotiated.
No doubt. It’s a weird kind of job though. Unique. Some level of being an asshole is tolerated and the legal question is whether what he did was so outside the bounds of the risks that the employer assumed that it rises to the level of cause. As you can imagine, employees get the benefit of the doubt in these contexts when they negotiate for with cause termination.
Jags are doing what you do here. Claim it was for cause and hope Meyer is sufficiently worried about bad publicity that you can save some dollars. They would have a much better case if they had fired him immediately for the kicking or the lap dance but they tolerated it, which actually makes their case worse.
If I were mediating this case, assuming the facts are what is in the public record, I would start with a presumption that it should settle around 70/30 for Meyer.
Edit — one component in these cases is whether the employee will be released to take other jobs. Meyer is under an obligation to reasonably mitigate damages, which is a major complicating factor in how to settle these kinds of cases and will be a big issue here given his lack of hirability.
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Here's the problem with this discussion. We have no idea what else there might be, particularly in emails or what not.
Typically what is reported is only the tip of the iceberg. Now you might argue that so many people hated Meyer that everything has been aired. I doubt we will find out though.
I'm sure there will be a settlement. Meyer doesn't need the $ badly enough to drag his reputation through the mud and so long as Kahn is reasonable, they'll be able to work it out. Getting $25M not to work for the next five years isn't the worst ending in the world, even for Urban Meyer. That gives him lots of time to spend in his bar.
The insanity of this interview, including Urban's claim that the world has gone soft and that his approach to "motivating people" is 100% ok, really shouldn't be overlooked.
Yeah, it was really something else. His continued use of how “heartbroken” he was too came across as so fucking disingenuous — such a narcissist, still only framing it around how it impacts him and has caused him to feel for the city etc.
Speaking as an attorney - none of us have any idea what’s in the contract he signed and so we have no idea of the basis on which they’re saying his termination was for “cause,” since that’s going to be defined in the contract.
Vague notions of fairness or “morality clauses” or whatever don’t tell us anything about what’s on the paper he signed with the Jags. Maybe there’s no basis to fire him for cause, in which case he’s going to get his money even if it means litigating. Or maybe there’s a strong case for it, in which case he’s not. If you haven’t read the contract you don’t have any idea.
Vague notions of fairness or “morality clauses” or whatever don’t tell us anything about what’s on the paper he signed with the Jags. Maybe there’s no basis to fire him for cause, in which case he’s going to get his money even if it means litigating. Or maybe there’s a strong case for it, in which case he’s not. If you haven’t read the contract you don’t have any idea.
This is the weak spot in Meyer’s case. He has to argue, on one hand, that he’s entitled to substantially the full $50M because there aren’t any lucrative job offers out there, yet on the other that what he did is run-of-the-mill behavior for a head football coach and doesn’t constitute cause for termination.
I’d rather have Khan’s case than Meyer’s in front of a jury. In arbitration, I’d say it’s 50/50.
Edit: I’m assuming the contract has generic language about “cause.”
PFT thinks it is likely standard. This what he got from one he had access to.
I think it is highly likely there is some alternative dispute resolution.
Mitigation is weird for highly comped employees. But yeah a jury will just pick a side.
Seems like whatever coach’ get hired in JAX reports directly to the onwer (Khan) and not the GM.
View: https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/1475625710798753792?s=20
you would have thought that Khan learned his lesson after the last coaching dumpster fire.
View: https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/1475625710798753792?s=20
Don’t know what coach would want type of job where they report to the owner and not the Gm.
you would have thought that Khan learned his lesson after the last coaching dumpster fire.
/sigh. Sorry Trevor. Trent is Baackle (you can groan) is not the step in the right direction this franchise needs. His last two years in SF were disastrous and he is a cog in the drama machine. Guy is leak city. He’s not the guy you want to make your next decision. I’m still going to wait to see who they hire but I think this move is going to keep a lot of smart good head coaching candidates away. I can’t see Josh McDaniels wanting to leave for this shit show. Khan should have cleaned house. That he is still making these kinds of asinine mistakes tells me that he isn’t learning quickly enough.
Best case scenario is that Baalke will have a vision and execute it with his choice of head coach and coaching staff. He will use free agency and the draft to rebuild the roster and put some talent (coaching and players) around Lawrence. I’m just skeptical because I didn’t think much of the Jags draft or free agency signings or their trades… really anything and if that’s all Urban then maybe he can rebound from his earlier disastrous end in SF. It just seems there are plenty of candidates I would think warrant a shot vs the guy you brought in to work with Urban. If you want an example how about Ed Dodds from the Colts. He has had both draft and veteran player experience and has had a lot of success with the Colts. Let a promising guy like him take a shot. Or try and get someone more veteran to work under him to advise him or a more veteran guy to replace Baalke. Mike Borgonzi is another name (Chiefs) who has been around a while and probably deserves a look. He helped build around Patrick Mahomes.
Quick edit: Baalke’s 49ers went 7-25 in his last two years there and the drama and leaks and dysfunction were saturating the media coverage of the team. Some of that goes with failure but some of that is on Trent.
Best case scenario is that Baalke will have a vision and execute it with his choice of head coach and coaching staff. He will use free agency and the draft to rebuild the roster and put some talent (coaching and players) around Lawrence. I’m just skeptical because I didn’t think much of the Jags draft or free agency signings or their trades… really anything and if that’s all Urban then maybe he can rebound from his earlier disastrous end in SF. It just seems there are plenty of candidates I would think warrant a shot vs the guy you brought in to work with Urban. If you want an example how about Ed Dodds from the Colts. He has had both draft and veteran player experience and has had a lot of success with the Colts. Let a promising guy like him take a shot. Or try and get someone more veteran to work under him to advise him or a more veteran guy to replace Baalke. Mike Borgonzi is another name (Chiefs) who has been around a while and probably deserves a look. He helped build around Patrick Mahomes.
Quick edit: Baalke’s 49ers went 7-25 in his last two years there and the drama and leaks and dysfunction were saturating the media coverage of the team. Some of that goes with failure but some of that is on Trent.
Disappointing if you are Jaguars fan but not surprising. Didn't think Khan would want to eat 4 years of his contract.
I understand Baalke will be involved in choosing the next guy but still considering his reputation I don't see how this won't cause conflict in the organization.
I do think that's a dysfunctional organizational structure, but a lot of coaches would find it more desirable because they have more authority reporting to the owner versus the GM.
I’m reading less into this than the rest of you. Khan gave Meyer final say on personnel; I expect he’ll do the same with a new coach. At that point, the incoming coach may well want Baalke to stick around for a while. The stuff Baalke would manage for the new coach probably isn’t near the top of the long list of shit that needs to be fixed in Jacksonville.
The real concern for me is that Baalke will play a major role in choosing the Jaguars’ next coach. But that’s not unique to Baalke — I’m not sure there’s anyone inside that organization whom I’d trust to give Khan good advice. I’m hoping Khan is mostly getting advice on this hire from outside the organization.
Edit: If Baalke’s penchant for drama is the concern, the incoming coach could tell Khan he won’t take the job unless he gets rid of Baalke. No way that’s a deal-breaker.
The real concern for me is that Baalke will play a major role in choosing the Jaguars’ next coach. But that’s not unique to Baalke — I’m not sure there’s anyone inside that organization whom I’d trust to give Khan good advice. I’m hoping Khan is mostly getting advice on this hire from outside the organization.
Edit: If Baalke’s penchant for drama is the concern, the incoming coach could tell Khan he won’t take the job unless he gets rid of Baalke. No way that’s a deal-breaker.
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It's hard to tell from that how hands on Khan plans to be, I will say... generally the more hands on the owner is the more likely the team is a steaming pile of garbage.
A Jags sponsor is trying to nullify its contract based on the Meyer firing. Their argument seems like a loser based on the limited facts offered here, but maybe they think it’s worth the expense of litigation to try to distance themselves from the clown show in Jacksonville.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33014602/sponsor-sues-jacksonville-jaguars-claiming-breach-contract-wake-urban-meyer-firing
Speaking of clown shows, some Jags’ fans intend to wear clown costumes to tomorrow’s season finale. Their goal is apparently to persuade Khan to fire Baalke.
https://apnews.com/article/nfl-sports-entertainment-indianapolis-colts-new-england-patriots-431d867f3c67740c2fd4932644dbb2e8
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33014602/sponsor-sues-jacksonville-jaguars-claiming-breach-contract-wake-urban-meyer-firing
Speaking of clown shows, some Jags’ fans intend to wear clown costumes to tomorrow’s season finale. Their goal is apparently to persuade Khan to fire Baalke.
https://apnews.com/article/nfl-sports-entertainment-indianapolis-colts-new-england-patriots-431d867f3c67740c2fd4932644dbb2e8
Firing Baalke would be a smart move. As a 49ers fan who watched Baalke drive that franchise into the ground in every possible way, I'm amazed that Baalke was given another chance to run a team. Anyone who would fire Jim Harbaugh to promote Jim Tomsula should never be allowed within 1000 miles of a GM role.
Baalke was hired to be Urban Meyer’s yes-man. If Meyer hadn’t been a tire fire, Baalke might have been in that role. There’s obviously concern that he’ll play a bigger role now that Meyer is gone. I’m hopeful that Khan is going to let the new coach pick his GM and decide what role, if any, Baalke should have moving forward. I’m aware there is not much historic precedent to justify this hope — other than hiring Doug Marrone, I’m at a loss to name any hiring that Khan was presumably responsible for that didn’t end badly for the club.
On the #FireBaalke front, this is superb work
View: https://twitter.com/trevorlandpod/status/1480254892455432195
View: https://twitter.com/trevorlandpod/status/1480254892455432195
https://theathletic.com/3190484/2022/03/21/the-most-toxic-environment-ive-ever-been-a-part-of-inside-urban-meyers-disastrous-year-with-jaguars/?source=twitterhq
Some gems in there. If you thought Meyer was a stupid, kinda racist bully who didn't take his job seriously and hadn't put in any work in decades.... you'd be right.
Some gems in there. If you thought Meyer was a stupid, kinda racist bully who didn't take his job seriously and hadn't put in any work in decades.... you'd be right.
How was he succesful in college? Just good at recruiting?
This is the sort of incompetence that generally brings you down anywhere.
This is the sort of incompetence that generally brings you down anywhere.
I mean its always fun to shit on Meyer but come on. I have to assume this was asked in Jest. As a kind of "Yup we know Donald is a Stud. Whatcha got". Kind of way. But this staffer is going to present it as "No REALLY....he meant it!" Thats just stupid.