The Jacksonville Jaguars are getting very close to having a new head coach. According to ESPN, the Jaguars and Urban Meyer are meeting Thursday as they “engage in advanced talks to see whether they can finalize a deal.” Meyer and the Jaguars also met Wednesday, and Meyer who won national championships at the University of Florida and Ohio State is very interested in making the jump to the NFL.
It has also been reported that Meyer is already assembling a coaching staff if he does decide to take the job. Meyer, 56 hasn’t been on the sidelines in 2018 after announcing his retirement from coaching. The Jaguars fired head coach Doug Marrone after the team finished the 2020 season 1-15. The team is also looking for a new general manager as the team fired Dave Caldwell in November.
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“The current environment is the head coaches, the kind of coaches you want, they want to be able to work very closely with the general manager on the personnel side,” Jaguars owner Shad Khan said after he fired Marrone, as reported by ESPN. “A key thing how we would be structuring this is that I’m going to have the general manager and the head coach report directly to me. That way, really, you have the transparency and the needs and the concerns of both parties without really getting filtered or having a chain of command.”
If Meyer takes the job, he will be walking into a very good situation. The Jaguars have the No. 1 overall pick and will likely take Clemson QB, Trevor Lawrence. The team also has over $73 million of salary cap space and have a ton of young talent. Additionally, the team is only three years removed from a 10-6 season and reaching the AFC Championship game.
Meyer is one of the best coaches in college football history. His first head coaching job was at Bowling Green in 2001 and won 17 games in two seasons. He then moved on to Utah and led the team to a 22-2 record in two years. In 2005, Meyer took over the Florida Gators and led the team to a national title in 2006 and 2008. He became the head coach at Ohio State in 2012 and won 83 games and one national championship (2014) in seven seasons.
