Urban Meyer Says Jags Won’t Chase Players, Will Trust Draft board

First-time NFL coach Urban Meyer has the ability, as Bill Parcells once famously put it, to shop for his own groceries. If Meyer covets a player as a coach, he can make those wishes come true.

Despite owning power few NFL coaches wield, Meyer noted Wednesday that sometimes he shouldn’t always get his way, Kevin Patra of NFL.com reports. Meyer said he must lean on GM Trent Baalke and the rest of his staff to steer him towards the best players, even if his coaching instinct tells him to fill gaps at certain positions.

“I find myself always looking at need and that’s where you have to be cautious, you start chasing players,” Meyer said, via the team’s official transcript. “The whole idea of value is completely new to me. That’s something I relied on [defensive coordinator] Joe Cullen and [offensive coordinator Darrell] Bevell as coordinators and [special teams coordinator] Brian Schneider, who has extensive experience in the NFL, and obviously Trent and his staff. I’m a quick learner. I’ve been working at this now for about three months, and the last three to four weeks, this has been our entire life in that room watching video, stacking the board.

“So, trusting the board is key. I’m at the point almost there that I will trust it, but as a coach, I can see where [you can say], ‘We need this, we need this, and we need this’ and that’s where you get yourself in trouble. It’s been a great learning experience for me and to answer your question, I’m nervous. I’m nervous about everything, I think you know that.”

With four picks in the top 65 of the 2021 draft, Meyer knows the iron is hot to snag impact players who can immediately produce.

“I see that we not only have to make those picks, [but] we have to add immediate value to our team,” he said. “That’s the way Trent, myself and our coaching staff look at it. That’s how important these picks are, so we’re looking at these picks to make instant impact, especially those first four picks.”

After spending his entire coaching career recruiting players, the draft is a different beast for Meyer to tackle, making the pre-draft preparation all the more critical in Jacksonville.

“We’ve had a couple dry runs,” Meyer said. “We’re going to have a couple dry runs again. I’m a control nut and an organizational nut, so I want to make sure that — I want to know where people are sitting, I want to know what camera, what we’re going to be looking at on the screens. And Trent has been great, and this is the first time this personnel in this organization will do it. So, we’re going to be on point. And so, at this point, we’ve had a couple dry runs, but we’re going to go in great detail early next week about exactly how it takes place. So, I’ll feel much better after that.”

The post Urban Meyer Says Jags Won’t Chase Players, Will Trust Draft board appeared first on Jaguars Gab.

Visit Jaguars Gab for all your Jacksonville Jaguars news! You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.