Urban Meyer is blowing his NFL shot with Jaguars faster than anyone envisioned | Estes

OK, a quick quiz: In eight seasons predating this one, the Jacksonville Jaguars employed only two head coaches.

Who were they?

If you could name Gus Bradley and Doug Marrone off the top of your head, you should consider yourself a true football fanatic. Either that or you’ve probably shouted “Duuuuuuval” a few times in your life.

That tandem collectively coached 128 regular-season games for the Jaguars, and they won only 37. That 28.9% figure  tells you that losing tends to be tolerated in Jacksonville more than most NFL cities, and, as such, the bar couldn’t have been much lower for the next coach.

Amazingly, though, Urban Meyer keeps lowering it.

What is it about our society that we love seeing grandeur tarnished in hilariously mortal ways? From coast to coast, the schadenfreude is thick over Meyer’s latest public embarrassment as an NFL coach.

When videos went viral this weekend of Meyer getting … um … friendly with a young woman at a bar in Ohio, it was a painfully awkward look for him. And it continues to cause fallout in advance of Sunday’s game against the visiting Tennessee Titans and Meyer’s former assistant Mike Vrabel.

Meyer called his actions “stupid” and apologized publicly for being a “distraction” to the team. In a stern statement, Jaguars owner Shad Khan called it “inexcusable” and said Meyer “must regain (the) trust and respect” of “everyone who supports, represents or plays for our team.”

The level of public celebrity is admittedly different for Meyer. If Bradley or Marrone or about a dozen other NFL coaches that few people would recognize happened to be in a similar situation, what are the chances it’d get caught and shared, paparazzi-style?

Meyer, though, has to know better. The fame that caused this video to go viral is also why he got this NFL job in the first place. Khan had to know that he was inviting the circus to Jacksonville. Maybe that was part of the appeal for a small-market NFL operation, but all press, it turns out, isn’t good press.

I was among the many who saw this Meyer-Jags partnership going poorly, but that was because you had a coach with a history of peculiar health problems – by that, I mean he generally hasn’t been able to physically tolerate losing – taking over a team sure to be terrible. I just didn’t think he’d be able to stomach it for long.

Meyer is losing games, but this isn't proving to be another example of a legendary college coach becoming mortal in the NFL. Meyer’s tenure in Jacksonville is unraveling as a result of his own aberrant decisions and actions.

When an NFL owner says the team’s coach has lost “respect” before the coach has even won a game, that’s not an encouraging sign, I’d say.

So far, though, there hasn’t been much encouraging about Meyer’s tenure.

Among the lowlights: The controversial strength coach hire and resignation, the Tim Tebow tryout at tight end and now this. All of it was needlessly damaging in the one place that should matter most to Meyer: His own locker room.

As someone who covers another AFC South team, I didn’t care that much when I first came across the Meyer video. It wasn’t until I saw a Twitter thread Tuesday from longtime NFL reporter Mike Silver that I realized how much this foolishness could impact the Titans’ next game – and the Jaguars’ future.

After quoting an anonymous Jaguars player as saying Meyer “has zero credibility” with the team after this, Silver went on to report that “players were particularly put off by the fact that Meyer canceled Monday’s team meeting as he dealt with the uproar.”

This, to me, is the most inexcusable part of this ordeal. Meyer willingly allowed his own personal issues to impact his team’s preparation and schedule on a game week. He’d never be OK with a player’s misdeeds resulting in the same, and they know it. They know that the rules are different when the coach messes up.

I’m not sure he’ll be able to recover from that. Losing the locker room is something no coach – even the great Urban Meyer – can hope to survive.

At this point, a 28.9% clip for Meyer in Jacksonville is overly optimistic.

It's sad, really. A truly great football coach is being reduced to this buffoonish figure. And worst of all, he's doing it to himself.

Reach Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.