Urban Meyer believes Jacksonville ‘is the place’ he can win in league
JACKSONVILLE, FLA. » Urban Meyer first started thinking about the NFL about a decade ago.
He was getting phone calls from team owners. He was intrigued by the notion of testing his coaching skills at football’s highest level. He was ready to make the jump.
But he put it off time and time again, waiting for a situation that “had to be perfect.”
He feels as if Jacksonville has everything he needs to make the move successful: an opportunity to land a franchise quarterback, a chance to mold the league’s youngest roster and the financial support to provide players with the “best of the best.”
The Jaguars formally and virtually introduced Meyer on Friday, with the three-time national championship-winning coach saying, “I believe this is the place.”
“I’m not going to jump into a situation where I don’t believe we can win,” said Meyer, who won titles at Florida (2006, ‘08) and Ohio State (2014). “I won’t do that.”
Here’s a rundown of Meyer’s first news conference with Jacksonville:
• Meyer plans to monitor his health, which was instrumental in him walking away from Florida and Ohio State. He stepped down at Ohio State in 2018 mostly because of a congenital arachnoid cyst in his brain, which required surgery in 2014 and bothered him throughout his final season with the Buckeyes.
“I’m not going to be running around like a nut on the practice field,” he said. “Those days are gone. I know what it’s supposed to look like and I want to be very demanding of everyone. It’s something I’m going to watch very closely . ... I had that surgery in 2014 that really helped things. But it’s just something that I watch very closely.”
• Meyer insisted he won’t coach at the college level again. Not at Texas. Not at Notre Dame. Not anywhere, ever.
“The times are changing. College football is different now,” he said. “The days of coaching the way you did back when I was at Bowling Green or when I was an assistant coach, I mean, the whole country has changed. Everything has changed, so you have to adapt. Those who adapt have success and those who don’t, fail.”
• Meyer declined to say which quarterback he will draft with the No. 1 pick in April. He mentioned Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Ohio State’s Justin Fields and BYU’s Zach Wilson as options.