ExtremeRavens Posted 17 hours ago Posted 17 hours ago Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr was on a roller coaster at Disney World, the so-called happiest place on earth. His wife, Chanel, couldn’t keep her eyes open as the ride took flight, but Zach’s were wide-open, while his son Zachary Paul II laughed the whole way around. It was quite a different scene last September. Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri, defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs, rematch of the AFC championship game, prime-time. Helluva welcome-to-the NFL moment for Orr, 33, the second-youngest defensive coordinator in the league when John Harbaugh ordained him to replace Mike Macdonald after Macdonald departed last offseason to become the Seattle Seahawks coach. “It was crazy,” Orr told The Baltimore Sun of the Chiefs. “They pulled out ALL the tricks. “The game, it happened a lot faster than what I anticipated from a play-calling standpoint. They were pulling out all the stops to make me uncomfortable. I was thinking about how they would attack our defense and our scheme. I didn’t think how they would try to mess with me as a play caller.” Kansas City coach Andy Reid has been around — three Super Bowl titles with the Chiefs, 2002 Associated Press NFL Coach of the Year with the Philadelphia Eagles, where he was Ravens coach John Harbaugh’s boss — and did just that. Among the tricks: Often waiting until the play clock got under 15 seconds to put the offensive personnel group on the field. That’s the mark that Orr’s radio to on-field play caller and linebacker Roquan Smith cut out by rule, thus rendering communication impossible and forcing the brain of Orr, in his first year of calling plays at any level, to scramble. “Week 1, I feel like I let the defense and the team down,” Orr continued. “I didn’t feel like we was ready to roll from my standpoint. I put that 100% on me. I felt bad. I felt sick to my stomach.” The pain would subside, but it would take a while. After losing a nail-biter to the Chiefs, 27-20, the lowly Las Vegas Raiders stunned Baltimore at home. Three victories followed, but the defense was a sieve. So after Week 5, Harbaugh hired his former defensive coordinator, Dean Pees, as a senior adviser. Meanwhile, the criticism mounted. Just a year earlier, the Ravens had become the first team in NFL history to capture the defensive triple crown, leading the league in sacks, takeaways and points allowed. Now, they were the antithesis of that, the nadir coming in a pair of games against the Cincinnati Bengals in Weeks 5 and 10 in which quarterback Joe Burrow threw for a combined 820 yards and nine touchdowns and wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase had 21 total catches for 457 yards and five scores. READER POLL: Who has the best team in the NFL? “You could look at it and be like, ‘Do they not think I’m capable of the job?’ Or you can look at it like, ‘Maybe I need some more help and maybe this guy could help me out,’” Orr said of the Pees addition. “If we tell the players they gotta be team players, we gotta be team players. “It definitely motivated me, though. I’m a highly motivated guy.” Orr, a former linebacker with the Ravens whose career was cut short because of a congenital spine and neck condition in 2017, could also bury himself in his work, he said. That wasn’t the case for his family, though. It was tough on his wife and father and others in his family. “They know there’s going to be criticism, they know there’s going to be praise that comes with it, but I don’t think they anticipated how much it might’ve been,” Orr said. “They were calling me all the time saying, ‘Are you good?’” He was. “It’s hard when people don’t know what’s really going on and you have to go with what’s out there,” Zach’s father Terry Orr, a former tight end for Washington and the San Diego Chargers, told The Sun. “But I thought he handled it like a champ and said what needed to be said and kept on grinding. “He never got down. I know he was frustrated, but he never got down. I think that helped not just with his players, but with us as well.” Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr is shown during training camp in 2024. Orr gained confidence throughout the 2024 season in his first experience as a coordinator. (Kim Hairston/Staff) What also helped was that Orr — who was likely headed to Seattle to become Macdonald’s defensive coordinator before Harbaugh quickly hired him the day after then-Ravens defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson bolted for the Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator opening — finally felt comfortable enough to make significant changes in several areas. Malcontent safety Eddie Jackson was benched, then waived. Aggrieved and also struggling safety Marcus Williams was also benched in favor of Ar’Darius Washington. All-Pro, do-everything safety Kyle Hamilton was deployed more often on the back end to help stanch deep passes. Struggling second-year inside linebacker Trenton Simpson was benched in favor of a rotation of veterans Malik Harrison and Chris Board. The structure of defensive meetings was changed, with position groups sometimes lumped together and players empowered to ask questions and share their thoughts. The scheme was tweaked. “Earlier in the season I was trying so much to keep so much [of the] carryover [from the previous year],” Orr said. “The system is the system and it’s been the system since Harbaugh started here, but every year has it’s own little twist based off opponents and personnel.” Once it took hold, the improvements were dramatic, with Baltimore boasting one of the league’s best defenses down the stretch. “I felt that, sadly, there’s a lot of things that were being coached that were coached correctly, and when he put it out there for us we weren’t clicking, as far as on the field,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “It actually held us back as a defense from what we could call if we couldn’t execute what was called, so some of the things had to get a lot more simple until we could show that we could execute these things. “Every single player was somebody not doing what they were supposed to do in those first however many weeks, and I think the biggest change was just all 11 guys doing their job.” Those around Orr noticed the impact it had as well, for the team and for the rookie coordinator. “My opinion was it was hard for him because it was first year coming in, I’m the DC, this is what I’m doing,” Terry Orr said, adding that father and son would talk after every game and the former would just let the latter go on unimpeded to get things off his chest. “I think he was slow to pull the trigger. He knew what he needed to do, but you’re in that position, it’s just tough. “But then he was able to put his chest out and say yeah I got it, I’m in charge. … He didn’t really feel in his mind he was in charge.” Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr celebrates with defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike and outside linebacker Odafe Oweh during a playoff win over the Steelers. Orr's defense played its best football in 2024 at the end of the season. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) Many on the outside credited Pees and some inside did as well, including Harbaugh, who praised the veteran coach for helping the unit reconnect with its defensive roots that Pees had helped established during his tenure as defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2017. But this spring, Ravens pass rush coach Chuck Smith gave an impassioned, 491-word defense of what Orr had done. “I watched this coordinator stand on 10 toes,” Smith said, in part. “Zach is the guy. Zach Orr, I’m telling you, is going to be an incredible coordinator, and let me tell you why. When we were struggling last year, I watched him stand in front of these mics every week and talk to you all, and he didn’t flinch. But I also watched him stand in front of the room [when we] played the Bengals, and it wasn’t like we were celebrating because, from a defensive standpoint, they did a lot. They had a great day on us. Zach Orr looked those players in the eye, and he never lets the highs get too high or the lows get too low; he stayed in the middle. “He always would be positive, but he was tough. He’s tough on the coaches and the players. He would tell everybody, and he would show everybody how close we were to actually having success. It might be an angle of a defensive back running to the ball, or it might be a pass rusher that ran past the quarterback, and the quarterback ran. Zach would stand and talk to everybody, and he led. He never flinched. … I know last year a lot of people in the media were saying, ‘Well, this guy came in and helped.’ No, Zach Orr did it. … He’s a special coach, and I’m really blessed to be around a guy like that.” If the games against the Bengals were rock-bottom, then Baltimore’s Week 17 contest against the Texans in Houston was its zenith. Christmas Day. Netflix. A Beyonce concert at halftime. The need for the Ravens to win against the AFC South-leading Texans to keep their AFC North title hopes alive. The game was a rout, 31-2, with the highlight a fourth-down stop by Washington at the Ravens’ goal line that was followed by the 5-foot-8, 180-pound defensive back sending his defensive coordinator to the NRG Stadium turf amid the celebration. RAVENS DEFENSE STOPS MIXON AT THE GOAL LINE. #NFLonNetflix#BALvsHOU on @Netflix pic.twitter.com/Nvn6E0lkjq — NFL (@NFL) December 25, 2024 “To go out there and put on a complete performance like that was great,” Orr says now. “It was one of the best days of my life. I’ll never forget that.” Yet as training camp kicks off with the first full practice, Orr knows that there is more work to be done. Baltimore ranked 31st against the pass last season, and while the Ravens were second in the league in sacks, they were middle of the pack in pressure rate. After forcing 31 turnovers in 2023, the Ravens also had just 17 takeaways last season, with only six teams forcing fewer. They also turned the ball over three times in a divisional round loss to the Buffalo Bills, while the Bills did not turn the ball over. The belief in Orr, though, has never wavered. “We all grow, get better,” Harbaugh said. “You learn from successes and failures, and Zach’s great about that. He is very humble, good combination of humility and confidence. Very, very, very charismatic guy, really smart [and a] good teacher. All those things that I knew, and you see it every day.” Now fit with a roster that is perhaps the best in the league, though, and includes a pair of highly touted rookies in safety Malaki Starks and edge rusher Mike Green, along with free agent cornerbacks Jaire Alexander and Chidobe Awuzie, Orr’s eyes are wide again. The excitement is palpable for him and his players. “Just the way he commands the room, you can tell there’s a difference in the confidence in him and everybody in the room, and he puts that confidence in us,” Hamilton said. “So, we follow his lead.” Added Smith: “He’s just so in tune with every little thing, even with the back end. It’s pretty sweet to see. I think it’s gonna be a very special year for him, as well as our defense.” And for Orr, that would be the happiest place on earth. Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. View the full article Quote
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