Time to heal: Jaguars still recovering from Meyer era

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Marvin Jones had a smile on his face and a pep in his step as the Jacksonville Jaguars went through their first organized team activity Monday.

The veteran receiver may have been more relieved than anyone in the building for a fresh start. A new head coach. A mostly new staff. A new outlook all around, really.

“When you like coming to work, good things happen,” Jones told The Associated Press following practice. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

The Jaguars are “healing” from one of the most tumultuous coaching tenures in NFL history. The Urban Meyer experiment lasted 11 months and might end up including as many lawsuits as wins (two). Meyer screamed at assistants, had run-ins with players and seemed to alienate nearly everyone around him while his college approach proved downright laughable in a locker room filled with grown men and millionaires.

“I do believe there has to be some kind of healing with the situation and everything that transpired last year because it’s just there’s a lack of trust that was broken,” new Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said. “For me, it’s about gaining the trust back and they have to see it through me. They have to see the transparency, the honesty."

Meyer’s time in Jacksonville was filled with lies. He told owner Shad Khan and everyone else he spent a year studying the league and then barely knew NFL stars, let alone his own players. He so often confused names that the team’s public relations staff started keeping a roster of the opposing team atop every speaking podium.

When a video was released in October showing Meyer on camera at an Ohio bar with a woman dancing near his lap, he initially told staffers the woman and others were merely trying to coax him onto the