ExtremeRavens Posted 7 hours ago Posted 7 hours ago The last time the Ravens broke in a new head coach and three new coordinators at once, “Mr. Holland’s Opus” was near the top of the box office, and their current offensive coordinator, Declan Doyle, was still a month from being born. It was February 1996 and the NFL had just approved then-owner Art Modell’s move from Cleveland. Three decades later, the Ravens find themselves in a different kind of reset. How new coach Jesse Minter, 42, intends to manage so much change in an organization that has been principled on foundational consistency for three decades is the principal question. Minter of course knows that history well. He served as a defensive assistant here from 2017 to 2020. “There’s a great piece of being here before and understanding the foundation — understanding a lot of the history, understanding what this place has been built on,” he said Wednesday. “But I’ve also formulated some of my own ideas over the last few years. There’s a foundational way that the Ravens play that we need to play like, but I also think there’s a new age and a new way to do things.” New age, indeed. Minter wore a hoodie beneath his sport coat as he sat at a long table flanked to his left by special teams coordinator Anthony Levine Sr., Doyle and defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver. A bottle of water rested in front of each — a small but noticeable departure from the can of Diet Coke that had long accompanied John Harbaugh. As Minter assembled his first staff, he returned repeatedly to a handful of words: leaders, connectors, teachers. Schematic fluency mattered. So did presence. Among his 24 assistants are five who came directly from the college ranks. There is also Doyle, the youngest play-caller in the league, and Minter’s 71-year-old father, Rick — once Harbaugh’s boss eons ago at the University of Cincinnati. The range is deliberate. “You definitely look at, specifically, each side of the ball as a puzzle, making sure that Declan has his experiences and where he’s been. You want him to be surrounded by people that can help him do the job at the highest level, so there are a few [coaches] that maybe he’s worked with prior,” he said. “There are also a few that I have history with, and then there are different levels of experience, and there are different levels of guys that have been play-callers, passing game coordinators, all those different types of things that can really help support a younger, newer play caller that I felt like maybe I had as I was coming up as that type of position. “Then on defense, I was really looking for teachers, connectors, fundamentalists and how they’ll teach the guys how to play defense and what we expect, how to play defense like the Ravens need to play defense.” Experience, he suggested, was less about résumé than about resonance. The youth movement is impossible to ignore. Minter is just outside the league’s 10 youngest head coaches, but this is his first time as a head coach. Doyle is two months younger than quarterback Lamar Jackson. Weaver, passed over twice previously for the defensive coordinator job in Baltimore, is still just 45. Special teams coordinator Anthony Levine Sr., is a former player who has been a coach in the league since 2022 but is just 38. Defensive pass game coordinator Mike Mickens (Notre Dame), defensive line coach Lou Esposito (Michigan), outside linebackers coach Harland Bower (Duke) and safeties coach P.J. Volker (Navy) have never coached in the NFL, while assistant defensive backs coach Miles Taylor (Nebraska) had only a brief stint last year as a coaching fellow with the Los Angeles Chargers under Minter. Mickens (38), Bower (37) and Taylor (30) are all under 40. For Doyle, the age is less a liability than it is a bridge. “It actually is a little bit easier for me to connect with guys because we are the same age,” he said. “We grew up in the same world.” Doyle has, as he said, been “too young for every job” he has held. The lesson, as he sees it, is that authority flows less from seniority than from utility. “Knowledge is power,” he said. “If they feel like you can help them and they feel like you can help accelerate their career and our goals as a team, guys are willing to listen, guys are willing to be taught and to grow and to work together.” The template for this recalibration is familiar. Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin won a Super Bowl before 40. Rams coach Sean McVay was 30 when L.A. hired him and at 36 is the youngest coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl. Mike Macdonald, 38 and a former defensive coordinator for the Ravens, guided the Seattle Seahawks to the title this season. Coordinators such as Joe Brady, Kellen Moore, Kyle Shanahan and Klint Kubiak all held those roles in their 30s before going on to become head coaches. Put another way, teams have increasingly entrusted offenses, defenses — or the lead chair — to coaches who once might have had to wait. Minter had been contemplating his own version of that shift well before Baltimore called. Last year, as defensive coordinator of the Chargers, he studied offensive systems across the league, paying particular attention to what Ben Johnson built in Detroit, where he was the offensive coordinator before taking over as the Chicago Bears head coach this season. Doyle, though he never worked under Johnson before 2025, had interviewed with him in 2022 and came, Minter said, “very, very highly recommended.” “Age is just a number,” Minter said. “This is his eighth year in the National Football League. He’s worked his way up. I think he’s really well prepared for this opportunity.” The staff is also not exclusively young. Offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford, 49, held the same job with the Atlanta Falcons. Senior offensive assistant coach Joe Lombardi, 54, was the Denver Broncos’ offensive coordinator the past three seasons. Running backs coach Eddie Faulkner, 48, had been with the Steelers since 2019. Pass game coordinator Marcus Brady, who followed Minter from L.A., has been a coach in the league since 2018 and had stints with the Indianapolis Colts and Philadelphia Eagles. Tight ends coach Zack Grossi spent the past four seasons with the Broncos. Offensive quality control coach Patrick Kramer spent the past five years with the Falcons, while wide receivers coach Keary Colbert was with Denver the past three years. Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, left, and defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver are two crucial members of Jesse Minter's initial staff. The group of coaches includes rising stars and proven veteran assistants. (Brian Krista/Staff) Levine, like Weaver, is a former player and is widely respected in the building, from players to executives. If the younger hires suggest a generational turn, the foundation remains seasoned. The central aim is cultural rather than chronological. “I think when they feel that it’s collaborative — when they feel that it’s ours and not just the coaches — that’s when you get the best version of everybody,” Minter said shortly after getting the job. Now that his staff is complete, the calendar also accelerates. The scouting combine looms. The offseason program begins in early April, followed by the draft at the end of it. There are voluntary workouts and training camp. The sprint, as Minter calls it, is already underway. “We’re on a sprint as a coaching staff up until April 6 to make sure that we’re ready for the players,” Minter said. “Then when they get here, it’s about creating an environment that they feel great about, that they feel like they’re becoming better, that they feel like they’re improving, they feel like they’re becoming the best version of themselves. “And then we certainly want to have everybody have high expectations from the outside. We want to build standards inside that match what we want the results to be. I think if we do that, we have a hungry group that is coming off of a year that they’re not as proud of as some of the previous seasons, and so there is a hunger amongst the players to get right back to work and hit the ground running.” Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. View the full article Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.