5 Observations on Urban Meyer’s Firing and What It Means for the Jaguars

After 11 months and 13 games, the Jacksonville Jaguars gave up on Urban Meyer as their head coach, accepting the mistake they made last January and giving them a chance to amend it before things somehow got worse.

But what does the Meyer firing mean for the Jaguars moving forward, and why did it have to happen? We break down both below.

The Urban Meyer embarrassment had to end to prevent any further long-term damage to the Jaguars' most valuable asset: Trevor Lawrence

The biggest reason Urban Meyer is no longer the Jaguars' head coach likely has little to do with his complete ineptness on the field (2-11 record, worst scoring offense in franchise history). It has a good bit to due with his wide-ranging controversies and his inability to lead the Jaguars off the field, but the biggest reason shouldn't be forgotten. If Meyer wasn't proving each and every day that he was the wrong coach to develop Trevor Lawrence, then he may have had a chance to survive it all. Instead, Meyer put Lawrence front and center in the Jaguars' train wreck season and failed to foster any kind of culture or offensive ecosystem in which Lawrence would have a chance to survive. Harming the rest of the franchise is one thing, but harming the development of the Jaguars' top asset is an unforgivable sin, and Meyer ultimately had to pay for it.

Meyer did his part to try to help Lawrence with veteran coaches such as Darrell Bevell and Brian Schottenheimer, but that is about where his help ended. Otherwise, Meyer's personnel moves sapped the Jaguars and Lawrence of playmakers on offense, while Meyer's own failure of leadership made it hard for an already struggling offense to actually focus on getting better. The Jaguars' offense is one of the worst in franchise history despite knowing all offseason who their quarterback would be. It was to the point where Lawrence himself was having to ask why Meyer was making foolish mistakes such as benching James Robinson. Meyer made a lot of mistakes in Jacksonville, but it is clear the most significant one was him making it obvious that he was the wrong coach for Trevor Lawrence.

Meyer's heavy-handed approach with players and coaches failed him, but he wasn't close to the same on-field coach the Jaguars were hoping they would get

In many ways, Meyer's exit was fueled by the fact that he created enough enemies inside and outside of TIAA Bank Field that media leaks about the turmoil inside the stadium were non-stop. Had Meyer not belittled his offensive staff or treated players like anything less than grown adults, the daggers in media reports likely would have been duller and in fewer quantities. This is ultimately what failed him as his narcissism and pride isolated him toward the end of his tenure, but it can't be forgotten that Meyer was somehow even worse in-game and on the field than he was off the field.

The Jaguars' football product under Meyer was worse than bad -- they didn't always even look like a pro team. They would frequently make mistakes such as failing to lineup properly on offense, receivers running wrong routes, penalties, dropped passes, too many men on the field, misalignments on defense, and so, so much more. Meyer was a bad leader but his actual coaching acumen -- at least what reflected on the field each Sunday -- was something worse than bad. It was woeful, with no real positives. From sloppy play to Meyer simply not seeming aware of what was going on at critical moments in each game, Meyer was even more outmatched on Sunday than Monday through Saturday.

Shad Khan deserves proper judgment for the failure of Meyer and how the Jaguars got to this point

When Jaguars owner Shad Khan swung for the fences and hired Urban Meyer last January, he had his fair share of detractors but the sentiment within Jacksonville was that Khan hit a home run and reeled in the big-name coach his fans wanted. He was aggressive in not only going after Meyer, but also in setting him up with what he needed to succeed from a resources standpoint. But with Meyer turning out to be one of the worst hires in NFL history, the blame doesn't lay with the fan base who advocated for it. Instead it belongs to Khan himself, who took the coaching search into his hands last year and steered it to Meyer from day one.

Khan was right to attempt to reenergize the base with a big hire, but Meyer's lack of leadership and controversial nature simply wouldn't allow for the experiment to work. Considering the Jaguars could have attracted plenty of fine candidates with their cap space and draft ammo and No. 1 overall pick, Khan wasting that job and all of 2021 on the Meyer failure is one he will have to live with. Khan made the right and mature move to pull the plug on Meyer's tenure after 13 games, but the stain of hiring him is unlikely to go away any time soon.

What are the Jaguars going to do with Trent Baalke?

One person within the Jaguars organization who could benefit from Meyer's firing? General manager Trent Baalke. The fact that Baalke was able to withstand Meyer's 13 games and come out the other side as still the general manager following his firing speaks volumes to Meyer's own personal failures as opposed to the Jaguars' failures as a whole. Baalke could have been held just as accountable for the Jaguars' 2-11 record and dysfunctional environment, but the Jaguars made it clear that it was Meyer who had to go.

What do the Jaguars do next with Baalke is the next biggest question. Does Baalke help Khan find his next head coach, and potentially even lead the search? Does Khan replace Baalke at the end of the season and hope to finally start anew without any members of a past regime in place? We won't know the answer for another month, but it is a critical decision to make. My guess right now is that Baalke stays on, with Meyer's ineptness proving to be so large and so significant that it actually created a type of shield for the rest of the team's decision-makers -- which says a lot about the job Meyer did.

Jaguars should take advantage of new league rules when it comes to finding their next coach

Besides the incentive of trying to get in front of season-ticket sales for 2022 and attempting to cut off a long line of embarrassing headlines that were produced as a result of Meyer's tenure, the Jaguars had one other major incentive to can Meyer now instead of at the end of the season: the NFL's new interviewing rules. With Meyer out of the picture, the Jaguars can get as early of a jump on their coaching search as any team not named the Las Vegas Raiders.

It just so happened that on the day leading up to Meyer's firing, NFL owners approved a one-year resolution that allows teams with head coaching vacancies to send requests for interviews, which employer clubs are free to deny, beginning Tuesday, Dec. 28 -- several weeks before the season ends. These interviews are virtual, but a team can't hold any of them if they are still employing their coach from the start of the season. The Jaguars should put in all the requests they can this time around, ranging from Brian Daboll and Eric Bienemy to Byron Leftwich and Kellen Moore.