Urban Meyer did not enjoy his first taste of free agency in the NFL.
Many of the deals in free agency are reached in the two days prior to actual free agency beginning during what some call the “legal tampering period.” Players are not allowed to meet with teams until free agency officially begins. The result is teams like the Jags had to reach many deals without Meyer being able to first meet with the players in person.
The Jacksonville Jaguars coach made clear that he found the experience “awful.”
“I guess in the old days you could bring them in and meet them, then have dinner with them and find out their football intellect, find out their character and things like that. So we had to do a deep dive on every guy that we signed,” Meyer said, via Doug Samuels of Football Scoop. “To answer your question, it was awful. I don’t believe it should be that way. I’m not sure how that rule came about, but, to me, that’s not good business.”
Understandably, Meyer would like to meet with players before signing them and committing a lot of money to them. The problem is if you don’t act quickly, players can sign elsewhere. So for Meyer, this is a bit of a blind process.
Meyer’s dislike of the process didn’t stop Jacksonville from being very active early in free agency. Meyer has to feel somewhat comfortable with those moves considering how aggressive the Jaguars were.
