Urban Meyer explains differences coaching NFL and college football

Former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer joined OutKick’s Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich Monday to discuss his time in the NFL compared to the major success he had in the collegiate ranks.

“It was the worst experience I’ve had in my professional lifetime,” Meyer said. “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 [games] in a row,” he said. “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.”

Jacksonville began the season 0-5 before taking down Miami (23-20) and Buffalo (9-6) in a three-week span. The Jags would finish the season 3-14 after ruining the Colts’ playoff hopes with a 26-11 thrashing while still earning the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft.

Meyer didn’t get to see his team pull off the upset, however, as he was out of a job nearly a month before when he was fired in mid-December.

His 2-11 NFL coaching record is a far cry from the immense success he saw at schools like Florida and Ohio State. Throughout his collegiate coaching career, Meyer amassed an incredible 187-32 (.854) record and was a three-time national champion (2006, 2008, 2014). He was even named Sports Illustrated Coach of the Decade in 2009.

Meyer said coaching in the pro’s changed his outlook on the game. Instead of focusing half his time on recruiting and the other half on game planning, the recruiting aspect was completely cut out once he got to Jacksonville. It was like jumping into the deep end for the first time without any help.

“The reality is you spend 75 percent of your time recruiting,” said Meyer. “In professional football, there’s no recruiting. So it’s all scheme and it’s all roster management. You’re getting guys rolling in on your organization on a Tuesday and they’re gonna play for you on a Sunday. So there is some obvious differences to the two games.”

With an all too quick departure from the league, it remains to be seen what is next for Meyer. Whether that be a move back to the college ranks or on the headset as a broadcaster, we’ll all just have to wait and see where he goes from here.