It didn't take a genius to predict that Urban Meyer would fail with the Jacksonville Jaguars. But it wasn't entirely speculation on the part of Rex Ryan when he thought Meyer would come up short -- he knew it from the moment he first spoke to him about the job.
Meyer's disastrous run with the Jags came to an end last week after a variety of controversies that took place while his team performed poorly. He clearly was ill-equipped to handle coaching in the NFL, joining a long list of college coaches who were incapable of making the jump.
Ryan, a longtime NFL coach himself, ripped Meyer for coming up short while knowing it was going to happen.
Why? He could tell when they talked over the phone.
"It's not just that you're playing Alabama every week, which is the case (in college)," Ryan said Sunday on ESPN. "He didn't listen, I knew he wouldn't listen. He told me about recruiting, I go, 'Recruiting? That's a picnic.' Like, you're going to go talk to a kid and talk about football and talk to their parents and have a meal and all that? Great. I'm talking about the grind. I'm talking about your job as an NFL coach is to put your players in the best position possible to be successful. That's your job. You want to see what a player's coach is? That's a player's coach. They respect that, they respect your work ethic, all right? You're there in the office three, four times a week, not taking a call from some kid and thinking that's work.
"I knew he'd get outcoached, and he did. Go back to college where you belong. And I'm sorry, look, I respect him as a college football coach, but I knew this was going to happen."
It was clear that Meyer wasn't committed to the grind the way an NFL coach is supposed to. And if there's anything clear from this entire fiasco, it's that someone would have to be out of their mind to ever hire Meyer for an NFL head coaching role ever again.
