Urban’s decay of credibility

THE FASTEST way for an NFL head coach to lose his team is for him to lose the respect of his locker room.

And right now, it appears Urban Meyer has about as much credibility inside the Jaguars’ locker room as Oscar Mayer.

Meyer — the former college coach at Florida and Ohio State, whom Jaguars owner Shad Khan fell hard for because of his gaudy résumé and popularity in north Florida — is just four games into his NFL coaching career and he has already made a mess of it.

It’s difficult to pinpoint which of Meyer’s recent transgressions was the worst:

Not joining his players on the team plane ride home after a difficult Thursday night loss at Cincinnati a week and a half ago.

Being caught on camera in a compromising dance-grind position with a woman who’s not his wife — at his own Ohio restaurant-bar, no less.

The subsequent series of apologies and excuse-making in the damage-control tour that has followed.

I think the fact that this coach, while being paid a reported $12 million a year and with the No. 1-overall draft pick, Trevor Lawrence, on his roster, wasn’t on the team plane back to Jacksonville is the most unforgivable act among these calamities.

If Meyer needed to separate from the team to tend to serious personal family business such an illness, that’s completely understandable.

It was a flimsy enough excuse that Meyer said he was staying behind to spend time with his grandchildren, because you know when NFL coaches can spend time with their grandchildren? During the offseason.

All of this leads to how Meyer is now viewed inside the Jacksonville locker room.

“He has zero credibility in that stadium,” a Jaguars player told longtime NFL reporter Michael Silver, adding, “He had very little to begin with.”

I’ve covered NFL locker rooms that have lost respect for the coach, and it never ends well. It’s virtually impossible to regain that respect.

The sanctity of an NFL locker room is a complicated place, where players’ respect for their leader can be a delicate and complicated deal. It’s difficult to believe that Meyer ever will restore players’ respect … if he ever even had it in the first place.