Should Urban Meyer’s lack of NFL experience be a red flag?
Since the Jacksonville Jaguars hired Urban Meyer to lead the team into this new era with Trevor Lawrence as the franchise quarterback, the No. 1 question surrounding the decision has been how Meyer would handle the move to the NFL. He’s one of the most accomplished coaches in college football history, winning three national championships (two at Florida, one at Ohio State), but he has never coached at the professional level, even as an assistant.
And frankly, the recent track record for NFL teams hiring first-time professional coaches out of college is disconcerting, to say the least. To find examples of it working out well, you have to go back to Jimmy Johnson. More contemporary examples, such as Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban, Greg Schiano, and Chip Kelly, all couldn’t cut it in the NFL.
Jim Harbaugh, who took the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII, is the most successful case study in recent memory, but his already rocky relationship with the front office deteriorated completely when the team’s play dropped off, and he eventually retreated to the college ranks.
It shouldn’t come as a major surprise, given the history of first-time NFL coaches, that Meyer’s inexperience is the team’s biggest red flag in 2021, per Bleacher Report’s Kristopher Knox.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have their new franchise quarterback in Trevor Lawrence. The biggest concern for Jacksonville now should be whether Urban Meyer is the right head coach to lead Lawrence and the franchise into the future.
The Jaguars obviously believe so, or they wouldn’t have hired him. However, Meyer has zero experience coaching in the NFL. He’s also made one baffling decision, bringing in friend and former Florida protege Tim Tebow as a tight end.
Tebow last played in the NFL in 2012…as a quarterback. While the move was Meyer’s call to make, not everyone is happy about it.
“Not everybody in the Jaguars building is thrilled,” ESPN’s Jeff Darlington said last month (h/t B/R Gridiron).
While plenty of coaches have successfully made the leap from college to the pros, the NFL is a different game and requires a different management style. We’ll find out how it pans out for Meyer before long, but his lack of NFL experience is a red flag.
Fair or not, it seems the decision to bring on Tebow as a tight end during minicamp has negatively impacted the perception of Meyer. It certainly plays into preconceived notions about his lack of understanding of how to manage a team of professionals.
However, it seems this issue has been overblown a bit. The Tebow frenzy has died down in recent weeks as the 33-year-old goes about his business trying to make the final roster, and no Jags players have commented negatively about the signing so far, at least publicly. Was it the best first impression for Meyer to make? Probably not.
Will it have a detrimental impact on the team in any meaningful way? It’s highly unlikely.
It’s undoubtedly possible that it could be indicative of a larger issue, and that this is just the first of many decisions that confirm the belief that Meyer is in over his head. But there’s also reason to believe that’s not the case.
There are currently two other active coaches who were hired from the college level: Carolina’s Matt Rhule and Arizona’s Kliff Kingsbury. The former spent just one season of his career as an NFL assistant before he was hired by the Carolina Panthers, and the latter, like Meyer, had no NFL experience, whatsoever.
It’s too early to judge Rhule, who went just 5-11 in his first season and is yet to land a potential franchise quarterback. But Kingsbury, who many expected to flounder after being fired at Texas Tech, seems to have the Cardinals on the right track with third-year quarterback Kyler Murray. The team just barely missed the playoffs last season and is expected to contend for a spot again this year.
The NFL game has changed tremendously, even in just the last five years. Concepts and styles from the college game translate to the professional level like never before, and it could be a sign that college-turned-NFL coaches are entering into a new era of prosperity. Jaguars fans will hope that’s the case as Meyer tries to guide the team out of a hole that resulted in the franchise hitting rock bottom in 2020.
