The last time Urban Meyer's football team got shut out, he fired both offensive coordinators.
Wholesale, immediate changes. That's how the man always handled unacceptable performances - with a couple of notable, nepotism-tainted exceptions. Incremental transformation was never part of his vocabulary, even while leading and shaping college kids.
Meyer is notoriously impatient, and seethes at the hint of mediocrity. He inherited Jim Tressel's roster in 2012 and spent his first fall camp in Columbus ingratiating himself to the players who had survived 2011 by informing them they had to earn the right to be coached.
He would scream make me want to coach you! I have no interest in average! Why would I want to be around average? It worked. That team ran the table - that's rare everywhere, let alone at Ohio State. Then they did it again. Then they won a national championship. Urban is as good of a college football coach as you'll ever find in any era.
Urban's Buckeyes lost nine games in seven years. His Jags lost nine before Thanksgiving.
And then at the end of his fifth season, a team entirely of his own making was shut out in the College Football Playoff, an unforgivable sin. Neither Ed Warinner or Tim Beck would return after that disastrous New Year's Eve, which was five years ago this month.
Meyer quickly hired Kevin Wilson and Ryan Day to take their places. Today, Wilson still runs the Ohio State offense while Day has Urban's old job. Good hires doesn't begin to describe it.
His corrective action was swift, effective and is still paying dividends in Columbus heading into the Buckeyes' fourth season without his name on the masthead. FBS coaches are scrutinized by their every action and inaction. He's learned this lesson in every possible way.
crying pic.twitter.com/0KyudCuEcV
— The Moyes Dynasty (@PintOfJack) December 12, 2021
But some of them, like Meyer, ascend into becoming football emperors. De facto governors. Supreme leaders. Cult figures. Celebrities that transcend being the state's highest-paid employee.
Sustained success at the right campuses will do that to a coach, and Urban's track record of winning immediately and consistently at each of his stops is the stuff thrones are made of. Bowling Green was 2-9, then Urban arrived and the Falcons went 17-6. Utah was 5-6, then went 22-2 under Meyer.
Florida was 7-5, Ohio State was 6-7, you know all of this - these are the comforting bedtime stories we read to ourselves innumerable times over the years when his Buckeyes were soaring.
There were exceptions, of course. Florida had a couple of speed bumps and two awkward retirements. You know how his final season in Columbus began and ended. Urban has always managed to bounce back after hitting rock bottom. He lands on his feet. Then he wins.
— RichardJohnson (@RJ_Writes) December 12, 2021
The NFL team he inherited went 1-15 in 2020 and had already clinched a 100% improvement in its win total prior to last weekend's 20-0 shutout at the hands of Mike Vrabel's Tennessee Titans. Jacksonville fell to 2-11, and journalists promptly unloaded their clips on him in the aftermath. It wasn't because the Jags lost.
Urban's Buckeyes lost nine games in seven years. His Jags lost nine before Thanksgiving. Losing hasn't been the worst part of Urban's NFL tenure. He has been the worst part of it.
Knives are out everywhere, from former players to - literally, just google Urban Meyer. A former Ohio State staffer once told me Urban could attract the best assistants because they knew their tenure with him was absolutely going to suck, but if they survived a few years they'd be in good shape to accelerate their careers.
Skills. Experience. Scars. And winning. They knew they would win, and winning looks great on a resumé. He wasn't wrong. Literally, just google Steve Addazio. Or Gary Andersen. Or Chris Ash.
I've had employers like that. Accept the job, do the time under them, get it on your resumé and then peace out to greener pastures you could not have penetrated as soon or at all without that stint in professional and emotional purgatory. You learn from a ruthless master and then spin it into your own mutation. Don't ever let a Michigan Man™ know where Bo got his recipes.
URBAN'S boss isn't Gene Smith anymore. It's guy worth 12 billion dollars. Gene's salary WAS a fraction of what HE PAID Urban. ThE NFL isn't just a different sport, it's a different world.
But the parts of Urban that work in college locker rooms go splat in professional ones - and we all knew this. I was positive he would tweak his methods for millionaires and I don't think it's premature to suggest I was hilariously wrong. Meyer is as self-centered and egomaniacal in Jacksonville as he was in Columbus.
His existential problem is the NFL rarely produces football emperors. De facto governors. Supreme leaders. Cult figures. That was the essence of Meyer's success in college. His boss isn't Gene Smith anymore, it's guy worth 12 billion dollars. Gene's salary is a fraction of what he paid Urban. The NFL isn't just a different sport, it's a different world.
He's been caught so many times being inauthentic with his words that his on-field performance was what salvaged his reputation. The sideline, ironically, is where he always spoke his truth. When he was emotionally shattered, he looked like death was consuming him. When he was happy, he was throwing his fists into the air.
No other Ohio State coach has crumbled to the turf in relief upon beating Michigan. Urban's body language is a beacon of truth. There's never been anything duplicitous about it.
Urban Meyers time in Jacksonville has been a disaster of epic proportions. Theres no reason not to move on now. @FirstTake pic.twitter.com/9u8wWfERf0
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) December 14, 2021
The NFL is lot more sterile, a lot faster, a lot less forgiving - and a lot more boring. Every team is a highly-refined death machine engineered to go .500 each season. Nobody cares if you’re elated with your team's performance or dying on the sideline while coaching the NFL’s least interesting franchise. It's a business with downside protection for owners only.
Meyer can survive another year in Jacksonville without winning another game. What he can't do is continue to be the ham-fisted drama queen that has kept him in headlines. You can barely get away with that in the NFL when your team is winning, let alone when it's the Jags.
Billionaires can tolerate rebuilding, especially in a business where you can suck and still profit. They don't tolerate public humiliation, and Meyer's first season as an NFL coach could not be going worse in that respect. He's at the bottom of that particular pit again, a familiar place that arrived earlier than usual this cycle.
It took years in Gainesville and Columbus to reach this point. Yeah, the NFL is a lot faster.
And in both instances, he found a way to rebound prior to exiting. If that's going to happen in Jacksonville, he will have to learn that NFL coaches aren't feudal lords and franchises aren't fiefdoms. His lifetime income is a rounding error on a financial statement for the man who employs him. He should have known this. He's running out of time.
Firing offensive coordinators after his latest shutout wouldn't be the same remedy it was for the Buckeyes coming out of the 2016 season. He's going to have to change the trajectory of his stewardship, regardless of the Sunday results - and then spend the offseason figuring out what he should have solved for prior to leaving Big Noon Saturday for the sideline again.
Urban's in a reciprocity situation to the one he was demanding of Tressel's refugees back in the summer of 2012. This time, it's on him - he's got to earn the right to coach his players. Perhaps he'll figure it out if given the time.
He doesn’t have a pink slip in his career. But he’s never ridden off into the sunset either.
