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Mike Vrabel has joined a list of people who Urban Meyer apparently isn’t aware of, even though in this case the two of them previously worked together.
Appearing on the Manningcast during Monday Night Football between the Baltimore Ravens and Los Angeles Chargers, Vrabel told a story about how Meyer asked him, “Do I know you?” during a 2021 game between the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars.
Vrabel recounted the story because earlier on the show, Owen Wilson was a guest and told a story about how Meyer asked him the same question when he was playing on the former Ohio State coach’s team during a celebrity flag football game.
There were a lot of takeaways from Meyer’s brief tenure as an NFL head coach, but one of the most surprising is that he seemed to have very little knowledge of anything that was happening at this level of football.
In a March 2022 report from The Athletic’s Jayson Jenks and Mike Sando about Meyer’s tumultuous tenure with the Jaguars, he was “unfamiliar” with star players around the NFL during a six-month deep dive into the league.
The group of players Meyer reportedly had no familiarity with included Aaron Donald.
“‘Who’s this 99 guy on the Rams?’ Meyer asked one staffer during the season, according to a source. ‘I’m hearing he might be a problem for us,'” Jenks and Sando wrote.
Meyer denied the accuracy of that report, calling it “so silly.”
Vrabel’s comment at least lends some credence to the notion that Meyer simply may not have a very good memory. He worked on Meyer’s staff at Ohio State from 2011 to ’13 before moving on to become a coach in the NFL.
The last game Meyer coached for the Jaguars was against Vrabel and the Titans. Tennessee beat Jacksonville 20-0 on Dec. 12, 2021. Jaguars owner Shad Khan announced four days later that Meyer had been fired.
