The lure of the game was too much for former Utes coach to resist. He’s not the first legendary coach to return to the game after retiring, and likely won’t be the last
When coaching gets in your blood, the hold of the game is difficult to break, even for those who manage to do it once (or twice).
Just look at the NFL. Tony Dungy and Bill Cowher made a clean break, but others, not so much.
Joe Gibbs retired after 12 years as Washington’s head coach, then returned 12 years later to coach the same club for four more years. Dick Vermeil coached three different NFL clubs a total of 15 seasons sandwiched around retirements that lasted 15 years and one year. Vince Lombardi retired after nine legendary seasons with the Packers only to return two years later as Washington’s coach. Jimmy Johnson was out of football for two years after a brilliant run with the Cowboys only to return as the Dolphins’ head coach. Jon Gruden retired for 10 years after coaching the Raiders and Buccaneers for 11 seasons and became a successful TV color commentator, but he signed up with the Raiders again.
Every one of those coaches won Super Bowls and came back for more.
Now Urban Meyer has become the latest coach to unretire (and unretire and unretire). Meyer, the former Utah coach, is returning to the sideline to coach the Jacksonville Jaguars. Like others before him, he left a sweet job in the TV studio to coach again. Getting paid a lot of money just to talk about football wasn’t enough.
Meyer’s return is marked by red flags. For those who know his history — his obsessiveness, his mental health struggles, the controversies he engendered — this just sounds like a bad idea. He’s obsessive even by the standards of an obsessive profession. Meyer was driven out of his last two jobs by stress-related health problems while also leaving behind a trail of problems that might have caught up with him eventually anyway. He took two years off both times, vowing after the last job that he would never coach again, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
He couldn’t stay away. He says he’s been studying the NFL for six months. If chest pains and other health issues can’t keep him out of the game, what chance does TV work have?
No one can argue his coaching chops. He won three national championships and compiled a record of 187-32 as a coach at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State, with 10 of his 17 teams finishing in the top six of the final rankings. At Ohio State he posted a phenomenal record of 83-9. He won 22 of 24 games in two seasons at Utah, including the last 16 in a row.
Still, two former NFL greats wonder if he’s up to the task.
Randy Moss believes that the changes the game has undergone since Meyer has been in the TV booth (COVID-19, social justice) will be problematic for him. Marshall Faulk thinks that Meyer, who undoubtedly will use the NFL’s No. 1 overall pick of the draft to select a QB, is not able to develop quarterbacks. Other than Alex Smith, he’s never produced a successful NFL quarterback, including promising prospects such as Chris Leak, Tim Tebow, Braxton Miller, Cardale Jones, J.T. Barrett and Dwayne Haskins. How would Trevor Lawrence or Zach Wilson fare under Meyer?
But these are not the real issues for Meyer. He’ll hire a capable assistant to develop a quarterback and figure out the rest. The real issue is whether Meyer can control himself.
His win-at-all-costs drive has been costly for himself and others who had to clean up behind him. He was widely criticized for the behavior of his players at Florida and his reaction to that behavior. More than 30 players were arrested during his six years as the Gators coach, including charges of aggravated stalking, felony burglary, unauthorized use of a credit card (a felony), felony theft and aggravated assault. That’s to say nothing of a 17-year-old tight end named Aaron Hernandez, who years later was found guilty of committing murder while a member of the New England Patriots and died at his own hand in jail.
Few of those Florida players faced any real consequences, from the law or Meyer, whose program reportedly had a lawyer who specialized in helping Florida players extricate themselves from legal issues. The Sporting News published an article headlined, “How Urban Meyer broke Florida football.” The Hernandez tragedy cast further negative attention on Meyer.
At the end of the 2009 regular season, Meyer admitted himself to a hospital for chest pains. Three weeks later he announced that he would resign after the Sugar Bowl, citing health concerns (he said he had suffered from stress-related symptoms for years). A day later he said he would take a leave of absence instead of resigning. He coached one more season and resigned again for health reasons. He later discussed his health problems: depression, anxiety, obsessive work habits, sleep deprivation, severe weight loss, the use of Ambien and alcohol to sleep.
In an interview with Bleacher Report, Meyer’s wife, Shelley, a psychiatric nurse, said, “It was just a big mountain of pressure, stress, lack of control and not accepting what he couldn’t control. He was not accepting that he couldn’t control everything. He’s a perfectionist. He wants to win every game. He wants to win every championship. And that’s just not even clear thinking. You can’t. You just can’t. When he was in the middle of it, that’s where you can’t think.”
By 2012, he was back on the sideline, this time as the Ohio State head coach. When one of Meyer’s assistants, Zach Smith, was accused of persistent domestic abuse, some of the blame fell onto Meyer for knowing about it and ignoring it. He was suspended for three games. Meyer announced his retirement at the end of the season, citing stress as the biggest reason. He said he didn’t think he would coach again.
But he’s back, of course. His players will be more mature than the players he coached in the college game, but will he be the same coach who drove himself to chest pains and Ambien in pursuit of wins? Meyer says he will change how he does the job and watch his health, but when the losing comes — and there’s no reason to expect the worst team in the league to improve overnight quickly — will he return to his old habits?
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/3oZrOVn
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