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ESPN analyst doesn’t believe Urban Meyer would work as NFL head coach
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
The buzz surrounding Urban Meyer heading from the analyst’s chair back to coaching—this time in the NFL—simply won’t go away. What once were rumors putting him in Dallas to take the Cowboys’ job if Jason Garrett is fired at the end of the season have shifted to both Washington, where Meyer last week took in the Redskins’ game with team owner Dan Snyder, and Cleveland, where Freddie Kitchens is under fire after yet another disappointing season for the Browns.
And, by all accounts, the Browns could make a little more sense given Meyer’s former post as the head coach at Ohio State. But if there’s one person that doesn’t feel that the NFL is the right fit for Meyer, it’s ESPN college football analyst David Pollack.
“I don’t see it happening at all,” Pollack said on his podcast, co-hosted with “College GameDay” colleague Kirk Herbstreit. “First of all, I don’t think his personality works well with professional athletes. He’s not a player’s coach. He’s not a feel-good kind of guy. He’s a dictator, man…that’s just what he is and who he is. I don’t know if that will fly with grownups and grown men in the locker room.”
To Pollack’s point, dealing with professional athletes is much different than dealing with college students, as Bobby Petrino, Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier learned in failed NFL stints. But that likely won’t stem the rumor mill from continuing to churn, which it will probably do unless Meyer definitively declines interest in either a collegiate or professional role in 2020.
[H/T 247Sports]
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
