ExtremeRavens Posted 4 hours ago Posted 4 hours ago Rick Minter’s 71-year-old eyes have seen a lot of football in a nearly half-century of coaching and roaming college and NFL sidelines, so it’s easy for him to recognize patterns, on the field and in people. Intensity. Detail-oriented. Process-driven. An analytical mind. Ability to adapt on the fly. Honesty. These are traits that some around football, at the pro and college level, have ascribed to Minter’s son, Jesse, the Los Angeles Chargers defensive coordinator who on Thursday was named the head coach of the Ravens after John Harbaugh was fired two weeks ago following 18 seasons. But the elder Minter, who is a senior defensive analyst (for now) for the Chargers and was the one-time boss of Harbaugh at the University of Cincinnati also sees them in another coach 2,764 miles northwest of Baltimore. “I think if you look at it from the Ravens point of view, one [they’re] familiar with Jesse, and two there’s a blueprint out there right now,” he said. “It’s out in Seattle with Mike and what he’s doing.” The Mike, of course, is Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, who has Seattle on the precipice of its first Super Bowl appearance since 2015 in what is just his second year at the helm. That Macdonald and the youngest of the two Minter boys are viewed similarly is also not surprising. Before each landed gigs running teams, they were ascendant assistants together in Baltimore from 2017 to 2020. Macdonald, now 38, began his NFL career there as a defensive assistant in 2015 and eventually worked his way up to defensive coordinator in 2022 with a stint in the same role at Michigan in between. The Ravens were also the first NFL job for Minter, now 42, after a call from Rick Minter to Harbaugh in 2017. There, he coached defensive backs before leaving to become Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator in 2021 then Michigan’s in 2022 after Macdonald had returned to Baltimore to become its defensive coordinator. Now, the question is whether he can he replicate the success of Macdonald, whose 24-10 record across two regular seasons included a 14-3 mark this season and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. “Mike and Jesse are connected at the hip,” Rick Minter said. “He’s doing it the exact same way that people in Baltimore will no doubt envision as a possibility. Good strong defense, balanced offense and, in this case, you still have a two-time MVP at quarterback [Lamar Jackson].” Next week, the Ravens will formally introduce Minter as the organization’s fourth head coach. It was a grueling, two-plus-week process for Baltimore’s decision makers, who searched near and far for the right successor to two decades of stability and championship pedigree. The blueprint, as Rick aptly called it, is out there for Minter to steal, tweak and own. It started two years ago, on April 8, 2024, in an auditorium just southeast of Seattle. There, Macdonald held his first team meeting as head coach. He stood at the front of the room holding a single sheet of paper in his left hand and a remote in his right. Macdonald scanned the room, “Man, this is pretty awesome, huh, guys?” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald celebrates after a win over the 49ers in the NFC divisional round. Macdonald has a 24-10 record across two regular seasons, including a 14-3 mark this season and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson) The Seahawks posted clips this week harkening back to Macdonald’s first day on the job; how prophetic his first day proved to be. The first-year coach waxed about a vision for the program. He challenged players to visualize a January NFC championship game — much like the one they’ll play Sunday night versus the Rams — in the rain and the wind. Macdonald set an expectation. Over the next two years, he built a winner. Seahawks players are an extension of Macdonald, the architect who welded his own principles, much of that carried over from Baltimore, with the once-lost fabric of Seattle’s Legion of Boom. “Jesse will do the same thing,” said Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea, who hired Minter away from Baltimore for a year as his defensive coordinator. “He’s not going to come in and try to strip everything off the walls and make it his. He’s going to be very respectful of what it’s been — obviously he’s been a part of that — and yet he’s gonna be methodical making sure his DNA is in the program, too.” When Macdonald was hired, then 36, he became the NFL’s youngest head coach. He replaced the league’s most senior coach, 72-year-old Pete Carroll. Macdonald was hired by an organization that parted ways with a Super Bowl-winning coach whose tenure had run dry after a season in which the defense regressed, and its offense underperformed. Sound familiar? OK, Seattle’s circumstances weren’t exactly the same as Baltimore’s. But there are obvious parallels, both from an organizational standpoint and that of the 30-something each team hired. Minter has had a long run of successful defenses, which the Ravens see as their gateway to reigniting what was once the most feared unit in football. In Baltimore, he’ll have perhaps the league’s most versatile safety, Kyle Hamilton, at his disposal, complemented by multiple All-Pros and a batch of high-upside youngsters. It took Macdonald two years to reach the doorstep of the Super Bowl. Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti has made it clear that he wants to win now; while fairly acknowledging, he’ll have to be a little patient. In Minter, the Ravens’ brass see their version of what Seattle could enjoy this weekend. “Jesse was impressive throughout our incredibly thorough interview process,” Bisciotti said in a statement. “He clearly understands the values, high expectations and history of the Ravens, and he has a great vision for the future.” Careers in coaching are rarely linear, but there are plenty of common threads that weave through the league and ties that bind. When Macdonald was the defensive coordinator at Michigan, he called Lea about defensive line coach Mike Elston, who had previously worked with Lea at Notre Dame. Elston went to Ann Arbor, where his path overlapped with Minter’s before both followed Jim Harbaugh to the Chargers. Since then, Lea, who was the Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year each of the past two seasons, has spent time with Macdonald in Seattle and Minter in L.A., and he sees some similarities as well. “The common threads are, they’re both really smart, they’re both process-driven, they’re both critical thinkers, they both tend to adjust and adapt,” Lea said. “What Mike’s done in Seattle is a great example of a year-to-year adjustment that unlocks performance. What he’s done with respect to hanging on to aspects of what the Seahawks have been but also kind of slowly folding in his personality and his vision has allowed that organization to find success early.” On the field, the patterns are more easily detectable. Broadly speaking, simulated pressures, fundamentally sound zone coverages with a mix of man coverage are the baseline principles that are the foundation of their defenses. “He’s smart,” Lea said of Minter. “Smart people figure stuff out.” Macdonald did it. The Ravens will watch Sunday night’s game believing that Minter can too. Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.x.com. View the full article Quote
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