Urban Meyer Opens Up On Differences Between College, NFL

The Urban Meyer-NFL experience didn’t go according to plan.

Not only were the Jaguars god awful under Meyer. But after reports of players hating him, and after he kicked kicker Josh Lambo before a practice, the Jaguars moved on from Urban just 13-games into his tenure.

Now, Urban Meyer is finally opening up about how it went south in the NFL after he was so successful at multiple different stops at the college level.

He appeared on OutKick’s Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich on Monday, and after adamantly denying that he kicked Lambo, Meyer spoke on how much different his experience was in the NFL after being in college for so many years.

“Well, I certainly didn’t help it,” Meyer joked about the notion that college football coaches can’t make it in the NFL. “I’ll tell you, Dan, it is a lot different. It is different. Just the amount of time you get with your quarterback. Just the amount of time you get with your team. The roster management. How you practice.

“You know, the amount of reps you get before you go play a game, to me, was shockingly low. For example, we would practice, you maybe get one or two reps at something, next thing you know you’re calling it in the game. In college, you never do that. In college, you’re gonna get at least a dozen opportunities to practice that before you ask a player to go do it in the game. So there are a lot of differences.”

Urban Meyer also opened up on how much of a toll it took on him to lose at such a high clip after being considered a “winner” for so many years.

“It was the worst experience I’ve had in my professional lifetime,” said Meyer. “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 ‘okay, it happens in the NFL. At one point, the Jaguars lost 20 in a row. Think about that. 20 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.”

It’ll be interesting to see if Urban Meyer even gets the opportunity to be a head coach again.

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