Urban Meyer was a disaster as Jacksonville Jaguars head coach.
He alienated players. He brought college philosophies to a professional locker room filled with grown men who couldn’t relate. He blamed his failures on assistant coaches, abandoned his team after losses (of which there were many) and generally encapsulated the Jaguars vibe that made an entire NFL franchise a running punchline for an NBC show about the afterlife.
Meyer went 2-11 in his lone season as a big league head coach and was fired after less than a year on the job. It was a buffoonish finish for a buffoonish man tasked with leading a franchise already fraught with awful leadership.
But now Jacksonville has a former Super Bowl champion at head coach. It only took one day of training camp for Doug Pederson to create a more cohesive environment for his players.
Jaguars OLB Josh Allen laughs with a big ‘yeah’ when asked if there is a difference between Doug Pederson & last year with Urban Meyer: “It’s a professional locker room. It’s a professional setting. He’s talking to us like grown men.” pic.twitter.com/fSFgwO6viT
— Cameron Wolfe (@CameronWolfe) July 26, 2022
Edge rusher Josh Allen told the press Pederson’s presence restored a “professional” culture in the Jaguars’ locker room. While he didn’t go into specifics, it’s possible he was referring to a setting where his teammates don’t get kicked while warming up or the team isn’t fined $200,000 for violating NFL practice rules or assistant coaches aren’t forced to defend their resumes or Tim [expletive deleted] Tebow isn’t brought in to play tight end.
This creates an amazing opportunity for Pederson. The bar Meyer set in Jacksonville is so low his replacement earned praise simply by not being a jackass. Pederson came in, treated NFL players like grown adults, and changed the culture of the franchise significantly. His team has barely stepped on the practice field and he’s got a win.
That doesn’t count in the standings, of course, but it’s an endorsement for a head coach who hasn’t really done anything. Does Pederson deserve praise for being a normal guy who has yet to screw things up one day into training camp? Not really! But Meyer was such a colossal failure for a franchise well versed in them that having a typical locker room earns high marks.
The Jaguars probably won’t be a playoff team in 2022. That’s totally fine. The standard Pederson is facing in his first season with Jacksonville is simply to keep the spotlight on the product on the field and not any zany stuff behind the scenes. He just has to show up, coach well enough to show even minor signs of growth, and keep his players from fomenting an insurrection in order to keep collecting paychecks.
His standard for success should be more than that. But when you’re following in Urban Meyer’s footsteps, all you really have to do is keep a sedan whose wheels had been stolen months ago from jumping off its cinder blocks and skidding into the ocean to appear competent.
But hey, good for the Jags for hiring an adult this time. At least they know it can’t get worse.
Probably.
