Just one week into the NFL’s 2026 offseason, 10 different teams found themselves in the hunt for new head coaches. It made for a dramatic week of firings — or in former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin‘s case, a surprise resignation — and the Baltimore Ravens were not exempt from this wave, parting ways with longtime leader John Harbaugh after 18 years of fielding contenders.
The organization’s chief decision makers would go on to spend the better part of two weeks poring through their options, interviewing any coordinator or coach with a hope of reinvigorating the defensive culture that they’d gradually wandered away from. Eventually, they handed one of the more desirable job openings to Jesse Minter, an experienced defensive specialist with a strong resume that included notable coordinating stints as well as a previous stop in Baltimore.
He has big shoes to fill in stepping back into a historic franchise that’s only ever known three total head coaches, and it’s already appearing as if Baltimore’s suits weren’t the only figures who were impressed with Minter’s profile and potential. He’s already getting rated as one of the savvier pickups of the hiring cycle, with some evaluators considering him the steal of the bunch.
“Jesse Minter is probably the cleanest fit out of all of them, the closeness to the scheme,” one anonymous executive told The Athletic’s Jeff Howe. “It feels like they went for a younger version of the coach they had, a mix of John Harbaugh and (former Ravens defensive coordinator and current Super Bowl champion) Mike Macdonald. Jesse is a stud. They were able to rewind it in a very seamless way. They’re minimizing the transition. That’s a really important thing to do when you’re making a hire. That’s an easy one.”