After a season muddled with controversy, Urban Meyer was fired even before his first season could end. And he opened up about how horrid the experience was.
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Meyer’s horrible tenure ended just 13 games into his first season as a HC in the NFL. He went 2-11 in his partial season and the Jaguars really stunk on the offensive side of the ball despite drafting the best QB prospect since Andrew Luck. They averaged a measly 9.1 points in Meyer’s final seven games, which ended with a five-game losing streak.
Off the pitch was even worse. Midway through the season, Meyer chose to stay behind with family instead of flying home with his team and then got caught on video the following night behaving inappropriately with a woman in Columbus, Ohio. There were incidents of him kicking players, cursing out coaches and all that translated into a failed system that was full of holes
Urban Meyer detailed his first season in the NFL
In an appearance on Outkick’s Don’t @ Me With Dan Dakich, the 57-year-old opened up about his depression amidst the season.
“It was the worst experience I’ve had in my professional lifetime,” Meyer said on Tuesday. “What really got me, I almost don’t want to say people accept it, I mean, you lose a game, and you just keep … I would seriously have self-talk. I went through that whole depression thing too, where I’d stare at the ceilings and [think] ‘Are we doing everything possible?’ because I really believed we had a roster that was good enough to win games. I just don’t think we did a great job.
“It eats away at your soul. I tried to train myself to say ‘OK, it happens in the NFL. At one point, the Jaguars lost 20 in a row. Think about that. Twenty games where you’re leaving the field where you lost. And we lost five in a row at one point and I remember I … just couldn’t function. I was trying to rally myself up, I was in charge of the team, obviously, and then we won two out of three, and I really felt like we flipped that thing.”
“You know, our defense was playing excellent. At one point our defense was No 1 in the league. We held Josh Allen to six points. Two field goals. And playing high-level football. Offense, we were really coming, and then quit scoring points. We just really struggled offensively and that’s when we went on another losing streak. I really struggled with that.”
