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In maybe the most important move of new coach Jesse Minter’s tenure in Baltimore, the Ravens have hired Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Declan Doyle as their own offensive coordinator, the team announced Monday.

Doyle, 29, will become the NFL’s youngest offensive play-caller. He’s expected to make his play-calling debut in charge of a Ravens offense led by star quarterback Lamar Jackson, another 29-year-old who will have his fourth offensive coordinator in nine seasons.

Doyle has only seven years of NFL coaching experience but is a fast riser. Bears coach Ben Johnson, who serves as the team’s offensive play-caller, made Doyle the league’s youngest offensive coordinator at age 28 last January. In Chicago, he was believed to be involved with scouting opponents and helping Johnson prepare game plans.

In 2025, the Bears finished ninth in offensive efficiency, according to FTN, propelled by a sophisticated running game and much-improved play from second-year quarterback Caleb Williams. The year before, Williams’ rookie season, the Bears finished 27th in efficiency.

“Dec’s done a phenomenal job this year,” Johnson, one of the NFL’s brightest offensive minds, said two weeks ago of Doyle, who reportedly withdrew from consideration for the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive coordinator job Monday. “He’s everything I thought he was going to be and some. He’s got tremendous presence in front of the players. Extremely smart. He’s picked up the offense quickly throughout the spring and [training] camp and has been able to augment to it. ...

“I think the future’s bright for a guy like Declan. Hopefully, we can keep him here for a long time, but I know he’s been an asset to me. He’s been an asset to our offense and all these players as well.”

Minter, a first-time head coach himself, said at his introductory news conference Thursday he was looking for “leaders and connectors and relationship builders and schematic expertise” in his search for coordinators. (The Ravens still have openings at defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator.)

Minter said in interviews Thursday that he was looking for an offensive structure that supported Jackson and asked less of him as an improviser. Jackson struggled with his accuracy and sack avoidance at times behind an inconsistent offensive line, and his running ability diminished after a Week 4 hamstring injury.

“I know he’s super excited about where we’re headed on offense, and I look forward to seeing him thrive in our offense,” Minter said.

Doyle has ties to some of the NFL’s best offensive minds. He followed in the footsteps of current Buffalo Bills coach Joe Brady, serving as an offensive assistant under then-New Orleans Saints coaches Sean Payton and Dennis Allen from 2019 to 2021. Doyle also overlapped with current Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, an assistant head coach and tight ends coach in New Orleans from 2016 to 2020.

After staying in New Orleans for another year as an offensive assistant under Allen, Doyle reunited with Payton in 2023 as the Denver Broncos’ tight ends coach. Before Johnson hired Doyle as offensive coordinator last year, he called then-Lions offensive coordinator John Morton, who’d overlapped with Johnson in Detroit and had served on Payton’s Denver staff as the pass game coordinator. Johnson wanted to know whether Doyle was ready.

“[Morton] said, ‘Ben, listen, he’s another Ben Johnson,’” Johnson told reporters last year. “I’m banking on that being a good thing. Listen, I think he and I are a match made in heaven. He thinks very much like me. It’s been awesome getting him into the building the last few weeks. Extremely detailed. Extremely organized. The age does not matter. He is going to be respected by not only the players but also his fellow coaches as well.”

“Right away, if you’re a player or a coach, you’re like, ‘This guy knows his shit,’” Payton told Yahoo Sports in October. “I was saying, ‘Hey, I want to invest a hundred thousand on Declan’s future.’ If he allows me to buy in at a certain [point], I would do that with him.”

Doyle, a former standout baseball player, started his coaching career in 2016 as a student assistant at Iowa, where his father, Chris Doyle, served as the Hawkeyes’ longtime strength and conditioning coach until 2020. Iowa reached a separation agreement with Chris Doyle after a large group of former players, many of them Black, spoke out about alleged mistreatment in the program.

Declan Doyle said in an “NFL Spotlight With Ari Meirov” interview last year that “football schematics were always of interest to me, even as a young kid.”

“I remember being a little kid and walking into the GA [graduate assistants’] office, and they gave me old playbook pages and writing on them and stuff as a little kid,” he added. “So that was something I was passionate about. All the people I looked up to were football coaches, and so that was really why I wanted to go into it.”

In picking Doyle, the Ravens passed on waiting for Broncos pass game coordinator Davis Webb and Los Angeles Rams pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase, whom they interviewed for their head coaching job. They also reportedly interviewed Lions wide receivers coach and assistant head coach Scottie Montgomery. Former Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, who also interviewed for the job, was never linked to Minter after his hiring as coach.

Doyle will have an enviable starting point in Baltimore, where Jackson, running back Derrick Henry and wide receiver Zay Flowers lead an explosive offense. But the Ravens’ offensive line needs work after an inconsistent 2025, and center Tyler Linderbaum is a pending free agent. The team fell from first to 11th in offensive efficiency this past season, limited by injuries to Jackson and a boom-bust attack.

Doyle could port over elements of Johnson’s Bears offense, which was among the NFL’s leaders in the rate of presnap motion, play-action passes and under-center formations. Williams and Jackson have similar athletic traits, most notably their improvisational ability and arm talent, and the Ravens’ 2026 offseason figures to be a proving ground for Jackson’s fit with various schemes and concepts.

“You try to shape the offense around the player,” Doyle told Meirov, explaining his process for building around Williams. “We’ve tried to really give him a lot initially and really see what he can handle, and then from there it’s our job to shape it so that he has success. And so kind of narrowing in on, all right, what are we good at? What do want to be doing here? What do we not want to mess with that might have been good with a different quarterback that may not fit our guy quite as well? That’s the biggest thing, is constantly evaluating and constantly watching the tape.”

Doyle replaces Todd Monken, who was not expected to return as offensive coordinator after the firing of coach John Harbaugh. Monken, the architect of some of the best offenses in Ravens history, was named the Cleveland Browns’ head coach Thursday.

This article has been updated.