Jaguars Near AFC South Crown as Etienne Recalls Urban Meyer Fallout

The Jacksonville Jaguars are on the verge of completing one of the most dramatic single-season turnarounds in recent NFL memory. Under first-year head coach Liam Coen, the team has surged to 12 wins after finishing 4–13 a year ago, placing it one victory away from clinching the AFC South.

A Week 18 win over the Tennessee Titans would secure the division crown, and if several games around the league break their way, Jacksonville could even climb into contention for the conference’s top seed.

While the present feels full of promise, the Jaguars’ locker room has not forgotten how far the organization has come. That perspective came into focus this week when running back Travis Etienne Jr. revisited one of the franchise’s most turbulent chapters.

Appearing on the St. Brown Podcast, Etienne spoke candidly about the Urban Meyer era, offering a reminder of just how chaotic things were only a few seasons ago.

1. A Hypocritical Breaking Point

Etienne described the moment he believes permanently fractured the locker room’s trust in Meyer. Following a loss to Cincinnati in 2021, Meyer chose not to fly back with the team, instead remaining in Ohio. Shortly afterward, a video surfaced showing the head coach behaving inappropriately in a bar with a woman who was not his wife. According to Etienne, Meyer then attempted to address the situation privately with individual position groups. “He was just being very hypocritical,” Etienne said, explaining that players felt the explanations did not align with what they had seen publicly. The disconnect, he noted, was impossible to ignore. For Etienne, that was the point when the team collectively checked out. Once the trust was gone, he said, everything spiraled quickly.

2. A Mismatch from the Start

Jacksonville hired Meyer ahead of the 2021 season, betting that his decorated college résumé would translate to the NFL. It was a bold move, but one that came with inherent risk given his lack of professional coaching experience. Early decisions only added to the confusion. Despite drafting Etienne as the second running back taken in the first round, Meyer had him spend much of training camp lining up at wide receiver. The experiment raised eyebrows throughout the organization and league. It also foreshadowed a year defined by questionable choices and mounting frustration. That fall, Etienne suffered a Lisfranc injury in the preseason that wiped out his rookie campaign, keeping him off the field but not out of the building as the dysfunction unfolded around him.

3. The Cost of Losing the Room

Meyer’s Jaguars opened the season 0–4, and the off-field incident in Ohio compounded the sense that the program was drifting without direction. Etienne recalled that once the video became public, it was clear the locker room no longer believed in its coach. What had begun as a rocky start quickly turned into an unrecoverable slide. The season ended with Meyer being dismissed before its conclusion, leaving Jacksonville once again searching for leadership and stability. Four years later, the contrast is stark. With Coen at the helm and a roster built around Trevor Lawrence and Etienne, the Jaguars are no longer haunted by chaos — they are defined by momentum and a shot at history.