Todd Monken Recognized by Defensive Peers As One of NFL’s Top Offensive Play-Callers
The Ravens’ explosive offense is loaded with established stars and ascending players, but the man who devised the scheme and calls the plays also deserves credit for the unit’s success.
Todd Monken, in his third season as offensive coordinator, has been recognized by his defensive peers as one of the NFL’s best play-callers. Some regard him as the best.
The Athletic asked six defensive coordinators and defensive assistant coaches from around the league to rank who they thought were the top 10 play-callers in the league. Monken placed seventh in the voting.
Monken arguably should’ve been higher in the rankings, but the Ravens’ star-studded offense caused some of the coaches to downplay Monken’s impact.
“A couple of coaches left him out of the top 10, but he also received two first-place votes,” The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen wrote. “The Ravens have weapons, notably Derrick Henry, and a top-three quarterback in Lamar Jackson. Some coaches believe it’s not hard to call plays with that sort of advantage, but Monken was hired to take Jackson’s game to the next level, and he’s accomplished his goal. Jackson had a career year in 2024, throwing for 41 touchdowns and running for another four. They had the highest explosive play rate in franchise history and scored 30.5 points per game.
“Monken has done a tremendous job mixing personnel groupings and creating a diverse package of plays for each grouping.”
One AFC defensive coach said: “It’s like defending three different offenses when you actually go up against it. Because there’s all these different pieces and he uses them well, and he combines those together to just stress you in completely different ways. First, you have to have a sound game plan against their two-back sets and then they can go to 11 personnel, and now, there’s all the speed out there and it’s the RPO game that you got to deal with … that whole nightmare of things.”
In The Baltimore Sun’s Brian Wacker’s recent profile story on Monken, he said the offense has been “staggeringly historic” the past two seasons.
“In 2024, Baltimore became the first team in NFL history to top 4,000 yards passing and 3,000 rushing in the same season,” Wacker wrote. “It led the league in yards per game (424.9) and was tops in offensive defense-adjusted value over average (35.1%), per FTN Fantasy. Quarterback Lamar Jackson had career highs in passing yards (4,172) and touchdown passes (41), while running back Derrick Henry boasted a career best in yards per carry (5.9) en route to the second-most rushing yards (1,921) in the NFL.
“The year before, in Monken’s first year as the architect of the Ravens’ offense, Jackson won his second NFL Most Valuable Player Award and Baltimore reached the AFC championship game. All of which begs the question, what will the third act provide?”