Urban Meyer proves once again that Jaguars’ decision to hire him was a mistake

Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer may be a great football mind, but his impulse control has once again been called into question after a recent incident at an Ohio bar in which the 57-year-old Meyer was seen dancing in a suggestive manner with a woman who appeared to be much younger than he, and who was definitely not his wife, Shelley.

The incident happened after the Jaguars lost, 24-21, to the Bengals on Thursday night. On Tuesday, Meyer addressed the media about the incident.

“I just apologized to the team and the staff for being a distraction. It was stupid,” Meyer said. “I explained everything that happened and owned it, and, you know, just stupid, should not have had myself in that kind of position.”

Meyer explained that he did not fly back to Jacksonville with the team after the game — he chose instead to stay in Ohio to spend time with his family.

“I stayed to see the grandkids, and we all went to dinner that night at a restaurant,” Meyer said. “There was a big group next to the restaurant, they wanted me to come over and take pictures, and I did. Trying to pull me out on the dance floor, screwing around, and I should have left.”

When asked how the team reacted, Meyer pointed out that when quarterback Trevor Lawrence went to Las Vegas for his recent bachelor party, Meyer told him to “be careful, and surround yourself, because I’ve seen this happen.”

Meyer also apologized to his family, saying, “That’s not me, and they were upset.”

Finally, Meyer spoke with team owner Shad Khan, who Meyer said was “very supportive.” Meyer also spoke at length with general manager Trent Baalke after Meyer was informed by phone that he was trending on social media for all the wrong reasons.

“A coach shouldn’t be a distraction,” Meyer concluded.

A coach shouldn’t, but Meyer hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt here — not from his time at Florida, or at Ohio State, or now. During his brief tenure with the Jaguars, Meyer has already turned the preseason into a clown show with the proposed addition of tight end Tim Tebow. He was already widely criticized for the hire of former Iowa strength coach Chris Doyle back in February, despite Doyle’s long and well-documented history of racist behavior. The hire was quickly reversed. He has been cavalier about COVID vaccination comments in ways that had the organization moving hastily to clarify things.

Meyer was a highly successful head coach in college, but he also left behind a litany of scandals he was able to push through for the most part because he was highly successful, and because most of the media covering him couldn’t get past deifying him for whatever reason. Meyer was unable to keep things in check at the college level, and it’s becoming more and more apparent that he does not have the ability to avoid being a distraction and a problem at the NFL level, where the stakes are higher, players are older, more experienced, and more powerful, and the difference between great coaches and disastrous ones becomes ever more obvious.

The Jaguars made Meyer a splashy hire because they wanted to redefine the direction of the franchise. Meyer has done that in all the wrong ways, and given his history, it has become clear that the hire was a mistake in the first place.

The only question now is how many more times Meyer will be allowed to embarrass the team before this experiment is brought to a merciful end.