Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer took some slack for his hiring of Chris Doyle, who is a former strength coach at the University of Iowa who was accused of making racist remarks, belittling and bullying players, and is now defending that decision.
Meyer hired Doyle as the team’s director of sports performance, which was unveiled during an official team announcement of his 28-member coaching staff that included the hiring of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, defensive coordinator Joe Cullen, and former Louisville, Texas and South Florida head coach Charlie Strong as assistant head coach/inside linebackers coach.
Doyle, who had been Iowa’s director of strength and conditioning from 1999 until June 2020, is now getting a chance at the NFL level, despite his controversial exit from Iowa.
“I vet everyone on our staff and, like I said, the relationship goes back close to 20 years and a lot of hard questions asked, a lot of vetting involved with all our staff,” Meyer said, according to ESPN’s Michael DiRocco. “We did a very good job vetting that one.
“… I met with our staff and I’m going to be very transparent with all the players like I am with everything. I’ll listen closely and learn and also there’s going to have to be some trust in their head coach that we’re going to give them the very best of the best, and time will tell. … The allegations that took place, I will say [to the players] I vetted him. I know the person for close to 20 years and I can assure them there will be nothing of any sort in the Jaguar facility.”
Meyer believes that there will not be any issues between Doyle and players, and does not believe that Doyle’s hiring will have a negative impact on the team’s efforts to land free agents this offseason.
“If I was, I wouldn’t have hired him,” Meyer said. “Once again, I’ll explain that if that becomes a question. The one thing I’m very confident is that I would imagine within a year or two we’ll have the best sports performance team in the National Football League.”
