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Call it a Khan job.
Let the Jaguars’ dalliance gone wrong with Urban Meyer be a cautionary tale for team owners who fall hard for star-power coaches they think are going to change their world.
Shad Khan, the Jags’ owner, has proven to be a brilliant businessman in the auto parts world where he’s made much of his fortune as a billionaire, but he was naïve to fall for the bill of bad goods Meyer was selling.
Khan, who on Wednesday night was left with no choice but to fire Meyer just 13 games into his first calamitous season in Jacksonville, unfortunately got exactly what he deserved for allowing himself to be seduced by a former successful collegiate head coach whose head was never truly into becoming a successful pro head coach.
Meyer arrived to Jacksonville to take Khan’s millions — reportedly upward of $60 million for five years — resting on his success as a college coach and figured he could just mail it in from there.
Maybe there were earlier hints, but Meyer not flying home with the team while opting to stay behind in Ohio, after his team lost to the Bengals to fall to 0-4, was a red flag. So, too, was his story about doing so to visit his grandkids and instead being caught on video participating in a racy “lap-dance” grind at a bar he owns with a woman who was not his wife.
Kahn was star-gazing and star-chasing at a time when he should have been seeking continuity and stability with his football team. Khan had a solid head coach in Doug Marrone, who had taken the Jaguars to within one game of the Super Bowl, losing to the Patriots in the AFC Championship game in 2017, and he was hasty in tearing it apart.
I recall a phone conversation I had with Khan while the Jaguars were in the playoffs that ’17 season for a story I was writing about Marrone and then team president Tom Coughlin, two Syracuse guys. Khan praised the work of Marrone and how well he worked with Coughlin, speaking about the importance of continuity and consistency within a franchise.
We spoke about how the best-run teams in the league — the Patriots, Steelers, Ravens and Packers to name a few — were the ones who avoided a lot of turnover.
Two years after that conversation, Khan got antsy and began to blow up his franchise to start over.
Yes, the Jags sagged after that 2017 playoff season, going 5-11 and 6-10 in 2018 and 2019, respectively. But that was a more a product of not having a quarterback than anything else. The Jags got to the playoffs with a really good defense and smoke-and-mirrors on offense with Blake Bortles behind center.
Going 1-15 in 2020 can be thrown out, because Khan ripped the roster apart in an effort to tank the season for the No. 1-overall pick to be used on quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Then he fired Marrone and brought in Meyer, who once led nearby University of Florida to prominence, thinking the head coach’s geographic popularity was going to put fannies in those teal seats in his stadium.
That didn’t happen and nor did any hint of success. Instead, all Khan got from Meyer was a litany of distractions and missteps. Things Meyer got away with as a college coach didn’t fly in the NFL while coaching grown men.
Now Khan is starting over again. Hopefully admitting his mistake before letting the Meyer charade carry on any further will save the promising career of Lawrence, who’s probably spent most of this season wishing he was still in college.
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