Coaches are the bedrock of every team and franchise. Without them, players wouldn’t be able to function effectively on the field. Usually, they maintain a lower profile than their athletes because they’re older and more mature. However, many NFL coaches have been embroiled in sordid scandals.
So today we’ll look at 25 sordid coaching scandals that rocked football. The likes of Jon Gruden, Bill Belichick, and Urban Meyer feature for their misdeeds and dumb decisions. Some of their choices were harmless but stupid, yet others impacted people in horrible ways. Check out the list below via Bleacher Report.
25. Urban Meyer (2021)
Meyer is the only coach on this list to make four appearances. All of them were avoidable, but perhaps none more so than the Chris Doyle incident. After Jacksonville handed Meyer his first NFL head coaching job, he naturally hired his own assistants. However, he created unnecessary headlines when he put Doyle in charge of the organization’s strength and conditioning department (via ESPN).
Doyle was a controversial figure because of his behavior at the University of Iowa. The strength coach allegedly bullied players, made racist remarks, and created an environment of fear. Somehow, Meyer believed he was an acceptable hire in 2021. The media knew all about Doyle’s history. When combined with Meyer’s past reputation, it made for a sordid story. In the end, Doyle left after just a day on the job.