JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Former Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer lost his arbitration case against the team after a ruling upholding Jacksonville’s decision to fire him “with cause.”
Meyer was fired just 13 games into his tenure with the Jaguars in December 2021 after a slew of negative off-the-field issues and a 2-11 start. On3’s Brett McMurphy was the first to report the news on Meyer.
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The ex-coach was attempting to collect the remainder of his contract which had more than $30 million and four years left. Had the arbitration hearing gone in Meyer’s favor, the Jaguars would have been forced to pay Meyer the remainder of his deal.
The Jaguars won the AFC South in Doug Pederson’s first season after replacing Meyer, and they won the division again last year under first-year head coach Liam Coen.
The stain of Meyer made the Jaguars and owner Shad Khan a punchline around the league almost from the outset. The league fined the Jaguars $200,000 and Meyer $100,000 for violating non-contact rules during OTAs in July 2021. And that was just the beginning of the most unreal seasons in franchise history.
Meyer’s tenure was filled with one public relations fiasco after another, from a viral bar video to an inability to give basic answers about his own players and playing time decisions. The final straw for owner Shad Khan was a Tampa Bay Times story about Meyer allegedly kicking former Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo during a practice. Khan fired Meyer the following day. Meyer mismanaged No. 1 overall draft pick Trevor Lawrence and struggled picking up the NFL entirely.
He has been labeled the worst head coach in NFL history by numerous outlets.
Meyer came to the Jaguars with numerous red flags from his time in college. He was a self-described coaching maniac who let winning games get in the way of handling things the right way.
Meyer’s time at Florida was littered with player arrests (31 Gators, according to numerous reports, were arrested for a variety of crimes under his watch). At Ohio State, Meyer drew a three-game suspension for his handling of assistant Zach Smith and domestic abuse allegations in 2015.