OutKick Exclusive: Urban Meyer Talks Josh Lambo Kicking Incident Accusation With Dan Dakich
During a nearly one-hour interview Monday morning on OutKick's "Don't @ Me with Dan Dakich," Urban Meyer talked football, his life after leaving the Jags and even addressed that Josh Lambo kicking incident that broke just before Meyer was fired by Jacksonville owner Shad Khan.
The accusation by Lambo that Meyer kicked him while he was in a stretch position was addressed by Meyer at the end of his conversation with Dakich. While admitting he made mistakes along the way as the Jags coach, Meyer was defiant on the Lambo accusations.
"When you come out and say a player was kicked, that's not true," Meyer said.
Dakich stepped in to set the record straight. "You didn't kick the kicker?" Dakich asked.
"I certainly did not," Meyer responded. "To kick someone? Come on. I've done this 37 years. Kick a player? The other players came up to me and said, 'We saw the whole thing.'"
In an interview published by the Tampa Bay Times, Lambo claimed that Meyer wouldn't refer to the kicking specialists by name. Instead he had nicknames.
“It was ‘Kicker, Punter, Long snapper,’” Lambo said. “Or S–tbag, Dips–t or whatever the hell it was.”
As for the kicking allegation, Lambo is on record claiming it was a five out of ten kick.
“I’m in a lunge position. Left leg forward, right leg back,” Lambo said. “… Urban Meyer, while I’m in that stretch position, comes up to me and says, ‘Hey Dips–t, make your f–king kicks!’ And kicks me in the leg.”
“It certainly wasn’t as hard as he could’ve done it, but it certainly wasn’t a love tap,” Lambo said. “Truthfully, I’d register it as a five (out of 10). Which in the workplace, I don’t care if it’s football or not, the boss can’t strike an employee. And for a second, I couldn’t believe it actually happened. Pardon my vulgarity, I said, ‘Don’t you ever f–king kick me again!’ And his response was, ‘I’m the head ball coach, I’ll kick you whenever the f–k I want.’”
During his conversation with Dakich, Meyer admitted there were serious failures on his part, but the Lambo accusation seems to be a narrative that the three-time national champion coach is intent on correcting.
Meyer didn't dispute that he came into Jacksonville and "made some mistakes."
"We should have done better. I'm not ashamed to say that," Meyer told Dakich while noting that he isn't ruling out telling the whole story of what went wrong in Jacksonville.
As for the losing, Meyer says he went through depression and described it as the "worst experience I've had in my professional lifetime."
"It eats away at your soul," he added. "I tried to train myself to say it happens in the NFL."
When the Jags went through a five-game losing streak to open the season, Meyer said he couldn't function. "I was just trying to rally myself up."