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Baltimore had not been home for very long for Jesse Minter, but that was the life he chose. That was the life that chose him.

You start off as a grunt in your early 20s, pulling 100-hour workweeks in college towns for little pay and less recognition, consumed by a sport you love more than it could ever love you back. You build relationships, you teach a system, you get buy-in, and then you leave it all behind to climb a rung. You succeed, you fail, you move on, you try again. You get smarter, more confident. You become a coordinator. You make it to the NFL. You have people wondering, “What if he’s the guy?” and maybe you start to believe it about yourself, too.

And then, one January day, you find yourself back in the Under Armour Performance Center, walking past Lombardi Trophies and wearing a nice suit for the biggest job interview of your life. Minter had spent just four years with the Ravens, as long a stop as he’d ever made in his coaching career, but so much of his football journey pointed back to Baltimore. The schemes. The relationships. The possibilities.

“I just felt,” Rick Minter, Jesse’s father and a longtime coach, remembered Jesse telling him afterward, “like I was at home.”

As Minter took the podium in Owings Mills last month, introduced as the fourth head coach in Ravens history, he reckoned with his past, present and future. “I didn’t get here on my own,” he said, but now here he was, 42 years old and a first-time head coach, in charge of a roster with Super Bowl ambitions. Before an auditorium packed with players old and new, team officials and reporters, Minter pledged: “We will be at our best when our best is needed.”

That is how Minter found his way back home. In interviews with more than a dozen current and former colleagues and players, a consistent portrait of arguably this offseason’s top coaching candidate emerged. As a coach, Minter is principled but flexible. As a leader, he is selfless but personable. He is the son of a football coach but the product of so many others.

And, before the Ravens could entrust Minter with one of the NFL’s most coveted jobs, he had to realize the kind of coach he could become.

The kind of coach he would become.

“It’s just always trying to evolve, always trying to get better,” Minter said last month. “I think that’s really been the evolvement, but it’s really about trying to get better every day, trying to learn and grow, learn from everybody, listen to people and always try to get better. I think that’s what’s led me to this point.”

Plotting a future

The plans for Minter’s first miracle were plotted out on diner napkins.

It was the spring of 2012 in Terre Haute, Indiana. Minter was in his second year as Indiana State’s defensive coordinator and fourth year on coach Trent Miles’ staff. They’d inherited a teardown job. The Sycamores, playing in the Football Championship Subdivision, wore New Balance uniforms and the stench of the nation’s longest losing streak.

But, as Minter sat with linebackers coach P.J. Volker and their wives over breakfast, their ambitions had shifted. Indiana State was coming off its second straight winning season. They’d imported NFL ideas to their defense. Players had bought in.

As they cleared their plates, a double date inevitably turned into a football confab. Minter and Volker, close friends and former college teammates, could not help themselves. For an untold period — if not three hours, then certainly long enough to make their wives shake their heads — they turned napkins into whiteboards, sketching defensive fronts and coverages.

“I think we drove our wives crazy, to be honest,” said Volker, Navy’s outgoing defensive coordinator and the Ravens’ incoming safeties coach. “Because we finally get some time to go out, and it would usually start pretty cordial, all four of us hanging out. And, before the end of it, it turned into me and him just talking football off on our own.”

Over the 2012 season’s first six games, the Sycamores allowed more than two touchdowns just twice: in a narrow season-opening loss to Indiana and in a double-digit loss to South Dakota State, a rising FCS power.

In mid-October, Indiana State prepared for a trip to the Fargodome. The year before, the Sycamores had been competitive with mighty North Dakota State, falling at home to the eventual FCS national champions, 27-16.

“Usually, it’s pretty one-sided when you play them,” recalled Tom James, a former radio analyst for Indiana State, “because they’re really, really good.”

The top-ranked Bison were averaging 44.2 points per game. Quarterback Brock Jensen, who was backed up by an impressive up-and-comer named Carson Wentz, hadn’t thrown an interception all season. But Indiana State headed to Fargo with confidence, James recalled. The Sycamores knew they could hang.

What they couldn’t have known was how they would score. In the second quarter, Minter called a zone blitz with a “funky rotation on the back,” Volker recalled. Jensen dropped back, double-clutched, then fired a pass into traffic. Cornerback Johnny Towalid saw the pass long before the unexpecting Bison receiver did. Towalid broke on the ball, picked off the pass and returned it 27 yards for a touchdown and a 10-3 lead.

Two quarters later, Towalid did it again. Another exotic play call — a three-man rush with eight dropping into coverage — another pass into traffic, another pick six, Towalid weaving 31 yards to the end zone for a 17-6 lead. A third interception late in the fourth quarter, this one by safety Larry King, extinguished North Dakota State’s best hope for a go-ahead score.

As Indiana State players and coaches belted out their school’s fight song after the 17-14 win, graduate assistant Alex Sewall marveled at the scene, how a night so sublime had come from a week so ordinary in its approach.

“It wasn’t like it was, ‘Oh, we need to really ratchet up for this,’” recalled Sewall, who also played safety for Minter at Indiana State. “It was kind of just the same focus and same game plan and attention to detail, week over week. … Everyone really just sticking to their role and responsibility on the defense and coming away with a victory was awesome.”

‘You take something from everybody’

The education of a coach began in diapers. When Jesse was born in 1983, Rick was out of football, working at Merrill Lynch. As Rick returned to coaching, climbing from New Mexico State to Ball State to Notre Dame, Jesse began to grasp the profession’s highs and lows, its X’s and O’s.

There was always something to learn, even from a distance. Rick and his wife, Ellen, divorced when Jesse was in kindergarten. Jesse and his older brother, Josh, would visit their father whenever travel plans and Rick’s hectic work schedule allowed — on game day weekends, during summer vacations.

Jesse has said he wanted to coach “for as long as I can remember,” and trips to Rick’s practices deepened his appreciation for the profession. At Notre Dame, Minter worked for the legendary Lou Holtz and shared a sideline with running back Jerome Bettis.

After Cincinnati hired Minter as its head coach in December 1993, Jesse visited often. The Bearcats’ special teams coordinator was another son of a longtime coach, John Harbaugh. Harbaugh’s successor was the team’s defensive ends coach, Don “Wink” Martindale. In 1996, Rick hired Rex Ryan as his defensive coordinator. Three years later, Mike Tomlin was named defensive backs coach.

“I think one of the interesting things in coaching is, you take something from everybody that you work with,” Volker said. “You see the good, and you see the bad, and you try to eliminate the bad.”

After an injury-marred career at Mount Saint Joseph — a Division III school in Ohio where Jesse was an undersize wide receiver and met his wife, Rachelle — Jesse returned to Notre Dame as a defensive coaching intern. He was fired after one season, along with Rick, the Fighting Irish’s defensive coordinator. Jesse latched on at Cincinnati, serving as a graduate assistant for two years. Then Trent Miles came calling.

Miles was close with former Ravens defensive coordinator and then-Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis. Miles had an opening on his inaugural staff at Indiana State. Lewis was friends with Rick, too, and knew of Jesse’s desire to get into coaching. Miles had an opening on his Sycamores staff — at running backs coach — and Lewis offered up Jesse as a candidate.

“Jesse comes from great genes, and he knows both sides,” Miles said. “He sees it from all lenses: offense, defense, special teams.”

After half a season as running backs coach and nearly two years as linebackers coach, Minter was elevated in 2011 to defensive coordinator. Only 27, he had new ideas for Indiana State. The summer before the 2010 season, Jesse and Rick had visited Ryan, their old Bearcats colleague, who was entering his second season as the New York Jets’ head coach. They returned with a Jets playbook.

“It was just really a whole other level of defense,” former Indiana State linebacker Alex Bettag recalled of Jesse’s schematic makeover. “For me, it was a defense that we had not seen, with the alerts and the different pressures. And this was, gosh, over 10 years ago now, and at the time, something that we probably thought was exotic but is just the norm now.”

An empowering approach

Not all brilliance is easily understood. The challenge in Minter’s new system was teaching it, communicating it; Bettag likened some of the early concepts to hieroglyphics. “It took a while for some of that stuff to sink in,” he said.

But the more Minter’s players understood of his defense, the more they appreciated it. And the more they appreciated it, the easier it was to execute. In that 2012 season at Indiana State, Minter’s second ever as play-caller, the Sycamores finished third in the FCS in scoring defense (14.3 points per game allowed) and sixth in total defense (296.4 yards per game allowed).

“I was never babysitting Jesse,” Miles said. “Jesse had free reins to do what he needed to do and build the defense his way, because I trusted him and I believed in him 100%.”

The following offseason, Miles was hired to lead Georgia State, a Football Bowl Subdivision program just 3 years old. He took Minter with him to lead the Panthers’ defense. Another opportunity for reinvention.

“This game is always evolving,” said Volker, who would travel with Minter to every coaching clinic they could attend as young assistants. “You better evolve with it and stay ahead of the curve. … You can’t just run the same stuff that you ran last year. You can’t just run the same stuff that you ran the week before.”

Linebacker Joe Peterson, Georgia State’s all-time leading tackler, said Minter installed “essentially a new playbook” every offseason. There was value in a fresh slate and a collective wisdom. Over Minter’s four seasons at the school, he entrusted Panthers players with more and more post-snap responsibilities.

The approach was empowering. In 2015, safety Bobby Baker transferred to Georgia State, his fourth school in three years. He was worried about his knee, which he’d torn up the year before at UAB, and disillusioned by his experience with play-callers.

“A lot of defenses, they do a lot of things that just don’t make sense,” Baker said. “And you’re like, ‘Why are we doing this?’ And the coach is like, ‘Because I said so,’ right? And you just got to roll with the punches.”

In Minter’s defense, Baker said, “there’s always a rhyme or reason.” Minter did not hold the keys to every play call; players had ownership, too. If Baker worried that a blitz might leave the defense exposed on his side of the field, for example, he could check into a better play call. Maybe he’d come down into the flat and push the cornerback into a deep zone. Or maybe Baker could stay in his two-high shell and keep the cornerback in the flat.

At Indiana State and Georgia State, Minter and his coaching staff were so meticulous in film study and game preparation that, before some plays, their defense felt as if it knew “exactly what play they’re going to run,” said Sewall, his old Sycamores safety.

“It was very rare that you had to look to the side and say, ‘Hey, Coach, what should we do now?’” said Baker, who started for a 2015 Panthers defense that was the most improved in the FBS. “It was like, they made adjustments, we made adjustments. And I think that was one of the great parts of it.”

Turning pro

Late in the 2016 season, Georgia State fired Miles. As the coaching carousel slowed that winter, Minter was still out of a job. A spot on Texas A&M’s staff had fallen through. Then his father called a coach he knew in Baltimore.

“I asked John to take a hard look at Jesse,” Rick said. His pitch to Harbaugh, who by then had spent nearly a decade as the Ravens’ head coach, was simple and flattering. “I said, ‘John, Jesse is exactly like you. He’s a clone of John Harbaugh. He’s nice. He’s good-looking. He’s people-attractive. He’s organized.’ I mean, all the attributes you would write about John Harbaugh over his 18 years [as Ravens coach] are Jesse Minter qualities.”

Jesse aced the interview. He was hired as a defensive assistant. Arriving in Baltimore, a new goal animated him: “Get to know the players and learn from them about what it took to be successful at this level,” he said last month.

As a college coach, Minter’s relatability had come naturally. He’d spent most of his life around players. At Cincinnati and Indiana State, Minter was only a year or two older than some of the seniors. At Georgia State, he and his wife would invite players over for home-cooked meals.

The same principles that Minter has said will shape the Ravens’ culture — treat people the right way, do things the right way, work hard, be on time — informed his approach as a young coach. Minter was not afraid to stand up for players, even if doing so risked the wrath of a superior. He was accountable to his defense and his staff.

“Jesse is really skilled at confrontation behind a closed door,” said Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea, a close friend who hired Minter as his defensive coordinator in 2021. “He’ll say exactly what’s on his mind, and he’ll say that to coaches, he’ll say that to players, he’ll say that to ownership, he’ll say that to whoever. For me, that gives way to really healthy collaboration. It can be really tough but ultimately rewarding.”

Minter’s disposition in an unavoidably volatile sport was as steady as a metronome. Good plays would get attaboys. Mistakes would become lessons, some applied harder than others. (“He would get in your ass now if he had to,” Peterson said.) But the objective was development, not embarrassment. “That’s part of his DNA,” Miles said.

“He treated us like men,” Baker said, “as opposed to just players that sort of work on the field.”

Minter’s humility carried over into game days. “He knew how to read people,” Baker said. At Georgia State, some players required pump-up speeches before kickoff. Others needed only simple affirmations, if anything at all. Minter’s approach around the locker room was tailor-made.

In Baltimore, he rose quickly. Minter was promoted to assistant defensive backs coach in 2019, then defensive backs coach in 2020. Safety Tony Jefferson, who would later reunite with Minter on the Los Angeles Chargers’ defense, has said they were “just on the same page” in the three years they overlapped. If Jefferson had a question about a coverage, he would ask Minter before anyone else.

“I think when you really boil it down, they’re looking for somebody that can help them improve,” Volker said. “He’s able to connect with his guys at a really high level because none of that stuff really matters if they don’t believe in the coach, really care about them and has a connection with them. You can say what you want, but if they don’t really like or respect the coach, you’re not going to get the most out of them.”

After the 2020 season, Rick recalled, then-Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh phoned his brother in Baltimore. He was looking for a new defensive coordinator. Under Martindale, the Ravens had streamlined their defense, riding a more modular approach to play installs and play calls to three straight top-10 finishes.

John Harbaugh gave him two names: Mike Macdonald and Minter. Jim Harbaugh went with Macdonald, the Ravens’ linebackers coach and now a Super Bowl-winning head coach. Before long, Minter left for Vanderbilt.

“He wanted to venture out, get back in the saddle, kind of test his mettle,” Rick said.

“I decided to leave, really, just on my own accord,” Jesse said. The opportunity to “see if what I had learned here could be put into action,” he explained, was too good to pass up.

‘A true professional coach’

Over the past four years, few defenses have been better. In 2022, after a difficult debut with Lea at Vanderbilt, Minter succeeded Macdonald at Michigan. His first season, the Wolverines finished seventh nationally in defensive efficiency, according to ESPN. In 2023, they finished first, the hard-charging engine of a College Football Playoff national champion.

When Jim Harbaugh was hired as the Chargers’ head coach two years ago, Minter followed him to Los Angeles. So did his Midas touch. The Chargers rose from 24th to first in scoring defense and from 26th to ninth in opponent-adjusted efficiency, according to FTN. This year, from Week 6 — the Chargers’ first game after trading for struggling Ravens outside linebacker Odafe Oweh — until the end of the regular season, only three defenses fared better in expected points added per play.

Minter was in his 40s now. There was gray in his beard and wisdom in his teachings. Daniel Jeremiah, an analyst for the NFL Network and the Chargers’ radio broadcast team, said Minter commanded “total buy-in” around the locker room. He spoke with conviction but without much ego, a rarity in the sport.

“He’s that guy,” All-Pro safety Derwin James said of Minter in 2024, their first season together. “He’s that leader, alpha. ... Guys play hard for him. He’s just that dude. Every day, you know what you’re doing to get with him. He’s consistent.”

By the end of this past season, Harbaugh was resigned to losing Minter to a head coaching job. Eagles general manager Howie Roseman had told Rick in December that Philadelphia had erred in not hiring his son as defensive coordinator in 2023. Jesse checked every box, said Harbaugh, the last in a galaxy of coaching stars to shine over Minter — and perhaps one of the most important.

Harbaugh was a lot, but he was unapologetically himself, almost to a fault. So, too, was Minter, from his early-morning Peloton rides to his video game sessions with his three children to his five pillars for defensive success. After Michigan sealed a 30-24 win over archrival Ohio State in 2023 with a last-minute interception in Ann Arbor, Minter had strutted over to near the Buckeyes’ sideline. As players and staffers retreated to the locker room, he waved goodbye.

“Jesse’s going to rock his joggers and walk around with a smile on his face,” Jeremiah said, “and then try and outscheme your butt when you get to Sunday.”

The next steps are the most precarious. As head coach, the purview widens and the scrutiny heightens. The Ravens’ offseason to-do list is long and complex: Sign quarterback Lamar Jackson and center Tyler Linderbaum to contract extensions. Fortify the offensive line. Energize the pass rush. Rebuild the coaching staff. Position the team to perform at its best when its best is needed. A fan base desperate for postseason success is watching and waiting.

“You stand on people’s shoulders many times to get your break,” Rick said. “But, once you’re there, you’re on your own.”

This is the life Minter chose. This is the life that chose him. Every step he took, every coach he studied, every player he coached, every game and practice he watched over — all of it led to that podium in Baltimore. Minter promised he’d make everyone proud. He was eager to get better. It was up to him now to figure out the head coach he’d become.

“He is a true professional coach,” Rick said. “He still knows and appreciates what they [players] do and commit to every day and every week. But now, when I saw him sit on that stage and listen to him for the full day’s worth of work right there in the auditorium … he had taken a major step. And it just lets you know he’d been preparing for that all his life — that, when I get to that stage, here’s how I’m going to be.”

Banner reporter Giana Han and columnist Kyle Goon contributed to this story.