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Even in his later years as Ravens head coach, age was just a number to John Harbaugh. But there were reminders.

In 2020, he underwent knee replacement surgery and watched his daughter head to college. In 2022, when he turned 60, he got birthday messages in a video tribute from kicker David Akers, whom Harbaugh had coached in his mid-30s, and kicker Justin Tucker, whom he would coach through his early 60s. In 2024, Harbaugh brightened when he heard a reporter call him and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin “young coaches.”

“Were the young coaches,” the reporter corrected Harbaugh. “Now you’re the not-quite-as-young coaches.”

Now, as the Ravens seek a replacement for the 63-year-old Harbaugh, fired Tuesday after a disappointing 2025, age might be more than a number. It could be a key criterion for owner Steve Bisciotti. The Ravens will need not only someone capable of lifting the team back into Super Bowl consideration by reinvigorating the roster’s young core but also someone who can grow gracefully into the position, as Harbaugh did over much of his 18 seasons in Baltimore.

As of Thursday, the Ravens’ eight reported head coach candidates ranged in age from 30 (Denver Broncos offensive pass game coordinator and quarterbacks coach Davis Webb) to 53 (Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph). Two other notable potential candidates are millennials: Los Angeles Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter (42) and Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula (39).

More and more, the NFL coaching landscape has become a younger man’s game. The median age of the 14 head coaches in the 2025 playoffs is 45 — the same age as Harbaugh when Bisciotti hired him. There are more playoff head coaches in their 30s (three) than in their 60s (two).

Former Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, an NFL Coach of the Year favorite after his Year 2 turnaround with top-seeded Seattle, was only 36 when the Seahawks hired him. He was only 33 when Harbaugh made him the NFL’s youngest defensive coordinator.

“It really didn’t cross my mind,” Harbaugh said after Macdonald was hired in 2022. “There are a lot of great young coaches in the NFL. There are a lot of head coaches right now that are very young in the NFL that are doing well. Sean McVay, gosh — to me, age is just a number. I don’t care if it’s a low number or a high number, it’s a number. So it’s what you bring, what you contribute, how you are and how you do the job.”

According to USA Today, the average age of an NFL head coach dropped from 53.4 in 2015 to 47.7 at the start of the 2024 season, the league’s lowest mark in at least 25 years.

Experience is no guarantee of success. Neither is youth. USA Today found no appreciable difference in the winning percentage of full-time head coaches younger and older than 50 from 2000-24.

In 2020, a year before the Rams won the Super Bowl, they went 10-6 with a 34-year-old head coach (McVay), a 35-year-old offensive coordinator (Kevin O’Connell, now the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach) and a 38-year-old defensive coordinator (Brandon Staley, who would soon be hired as the Chargers’ head coach).

In 2023, the Arizona Cardinals assembled their own under-40 coaching trio: head coach Jonathan Gannon (40), offensive coordinator Drew Petzing (35) and defensive coordinator Nick Rallis (29). Of the 14 assistants Gannon hired to the Cardinals’ staff, eight were in their 30s.

“Experience is valuable, there’s no doubt about it,” Petzing said in 2023. “But at the end of the day I have to be good at my job. If I’m good at it, my age doesn’t matter. And if I’m bad at it my age doesn’t matter.”

The Cardinals were not good enough at it. They went just 15-36 in three seasons under Gannon, who was fired Monday.

Bisciotti’s first wave of candidates draws from a range of backgrounds. There is a former head coach in his 50s (Joseph) and four more in their 40s (San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and former Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury).

There is a former Ravens assistant coach (Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver) and the son of a former Ravens offensive coordinator (Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak). There’s even a candidate (Webb) who played in college for another candidate (Kingsbury, the former coach at Texas Tech).

The field will grow and shrink in the coming days and perhaps weeks. Only Bisciotti and a small circle in Owings Mills know the traits he values most. In the two-plus decades since taking control of the Ravens, he’s built one of the NFL’s most stable organizations. Now, for the first time in nearly two decades, Bisciotti must make one of his important hires.

Will he go young or old? Offense or defense? Head coaching experience or a clean slate?

“To me, that’s what he does. He made his fortune hiring people,” Harbaugh said in 2022, referring to Aerotek, the staffing and recruiting company that Bisciotti founded. “I think nobody’s more thorough and covers every base more than Steve Bisciotti, and I feel like that’s the way this organization is grounded — on his philosophies and how he does it. And I think we’ve been great at it. I think we’ve been very thorough, very diverse, very fair, very open in what we’ve done, and I’m kind of proud of that.”