Jaguars owner releases statement on Urban Meyer incident

Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer’s job appears to be safe. For the moment.

Following several days of speculation about the future of Meyer’s position in Jacksonville, Shad Khan, the team’s owner since 2012, released a statement on Tuesday.

“I have addressed this matter with Urban,” Khan said. “Specifics of our conversation will be held in confidence. What I will say is his conduct last weekend was inexcusable. I appreciate Urban’s remorse, which I believe is sincere. Now, he must regain our trust and respect. That will require a personal commitment from Urban to everyone who supports, represents or plays for our team. I am confident he will deliver.”

A video surfaced over the weekend of Meyer in a bar in Ohio with another woman, who is not his wife, dancing against him following a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. The video has since gone viral, and Meyer apologized on Monday.

“I just apologized to the team and the staff for being a distraction,” Meyer said. “It was stupid. So, I explained to everybody what happened and owned it. It was stupid. I should not have had myself in that position.”

Situation in Jacksonville at a ‘crisis point’

The Jaguars are already 0-4, but the incident with Meyer adds a whole additional layer of problems within the organization. Sports Illustrated’s Mike Silver painted a chaotic picture of what is happening in North Florida.

“The Urban Meyer situation in Jacksonville has reached a crisis point, especially in the locker room,” Silver tweeted in a five part thread. “One player told me, ‘He has zero credibility in that stadium. He had very little to begin with.’

“Players were particularly put off by the fact that Meyer canceled Monday’s team meeting, as he dealt with the uproar over the videos of him and a young woman getting cozy in that Ohio bar. ‘He even canceled the team meeting. He was too scared,’ a player said.”

Silver went on to say that players were skeptical of Meyer’s “apology” to the team. 

“Instead Meyer ‘only apologized to position groups individually.’ He portrayed the woman in the videos as a random person who was ‘just there dancing.’ Suffice it to say, his audience was highly skeptical.”

After Meyer spoke to the team, Silver reports that one Jaguars player said that the entire team started laughing after his apology once he left the room.

“Said one player: ‘We looked at him like, WTF? Right when he left everyone started dying laughing. And he knew it,’ Silver tweeted. “Bottom line, said the player: ‘It’s bad. I don’t know how he’s gonna function.’”

On3’s Jonathan Wagner contributed to this report.