The Collective podcast<\/a>, Hawkins admitted Minter\u2019s system heavily influenced his decision.<\/p>\n\u201cOh the man factored in a lot honestly. You know when I was going through this process, you know, when it came down to two teams um with Ravens being one of them, I basically just figured and looked at, you know, obviously knew the resume of who he was. We played the Chargers in the playoffs. So, I knew what type of defense they uh ran.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Hawkins, Baltimore offered more than an opportunity for playing time \u2014 it offered a defensive system he already respected from firsthand experience in key matchups. After watching Jesse Minter’s aggressive scheme with the Chargers, Hawkins saw a defense built around versatility, speed, and attacking offenses from every angle. That familiarity ultimately helped make the Ravens stand out, and Baltimore now adds another experienced defender who already appears fully invested in the vision for 2026.<\/p>\n
Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 9, 2026, 4:38 p.m. ET One of the biggest reasons Jaylinn Hawkins chose Baltimore came down to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[95878,184,117,2282,7,6,169,119281,96963,96964,95882,95898,95946,97216,102591,95895,95906,95883,95881],"class_list":["post-887343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-ravens","tag-accessfree","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-baltimoreravens","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-ravens","tag-sourceravens-wire","tag-sstssportsnflravens","tag-sstsnravens","tag-tagamerican-football","tag-tagbaltimore-ravens","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagcgr-sports","tag-tagjaylinn-hawkins","tag-tagnfl-hub","tag-tagoverall-positive","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116549548993801443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}