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In just over a month, the Ravens have remade their coaching staff.

On Jan. 6, they fired head coach John Harbaugh. On Jan. 22, they hired Jesse Minter as his replacement. And on Thursday they finalized Minter’s first staff, from his three coordinators to his chief of staff.

Here are four takeaways from the Ravens’ coaching and support staff hires.

Experience matters

Over 18 seasons in Baltimore, Harbaugh never had an offensive and defensive coordinator duo as inexperienced as Minter’s first. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Only one of Harbaugh’s seven offensive coordinators took over with no prior NFL coordinator experience: Jim Caldwell, who became the Detroit Lions’ head coach a year after a Super Bowl title. Four of his defensive play-callers — Greg Mattison, Chuck Pagano, Mike Macdonald and Zach Orr — had no such coordinator experience. (Pagano and Macdonald quickly became head coaches.) But each overlapped with an experienced offensive coordinator.

The 2026 Ravens, meanwhile, are relatively green at the top. Minter, 42, is a first-time head coach with just two years of experience calling defensive plays, which he’ll continue doing in Baltimore. Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, 29, did not call plays in his first and only year under Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson. Defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, 45, has just three years of play-calling experience. And Anthony Levine Sr., 38, is a first-time special teams coordinator.

But Minter didn’t skimp on institutional knowledge in his staff construction. Senior offensive assistant Joe Lombardi has served as offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos over the past five seasons. Marcus Brady was the Indianapolis Colts’ offensive coordinator for 1 1/2 seasons. Offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford was Louisville’s offensive coordinator for two seasons before jumping to the NFL in 2021.

Safeties coach P.J. Volker was Navy’s coordinator from 2019 to 2025. Analyst Rick Minter, Jesse’s father, has spent decades in college and the NFL. And senior assistant special teams coach Ben Kotwica has over a decade of experience as a special teams coordinator.

Common ground

Harbaugh was often criticized, sometimes unfairly, for his tendency of adding former coaching colleagues to his staff. It’s notable, then, that three of Minter’s most important hires — Doyle, Weaver and Ledford, considered one of the league’s best position coaches available after the Atlanta Falcons decided not to retain him — have never worked with him.

But the Ravens didn’t build their staff with a blind eye to shared backgrounds. There’s connective tissue throughout their new hires. Among them:

• Doyle worked with Lombardi and tight ends coach Zack Grossi on the Denver Broncos’ staff in 2023 and 2024.
• Brady worked with Minter on the Chargers’ staff the past two years.
• Wide receivers coach Keary Colbert worked with assistant wide receivers coach Prentice Gill at USC from 2016 to 2018.
• Ledford worked with assistant offensive line coach Shawn Flaherty and offensive quality control coach Patrick Kramer on the Falcons’ staff the past four years.
• Outside linebackers coach Harland Bower worked with inside linebackers coach Tyler Santucci at Texas A&M in 2021 and Duke in 2023.
• Secondary coach Mike Mickens played at Cincinnati while Minter was a graduate assistant and coached under him as a defensive assistant at Indiana State in 2012, Minter’s first year as a defensive coordinator.
• Volker, one of Minter’s closest friends in coaching, played with him at Division II Mount St. Joseph and coached with him at Indiana State (2010-12) and Georgia State (2013-16).
• Assistant defensive backs coach Miles Taylor played and served as a graduate assistant at Iowa, while Doyle was an offensive student assistant for the Hawkeyes from 2016 to 2018.
• Rick Minter has worked with his son throughout his coaching career, including on the Chargers’ staff.
• Christina DeRuyter, Jesse Minter’s chief of staff, spent the past two seasons as the Chargers’ director of football logistics.

Weaver and Levine, former Ravens players, serve as links to the franchise’s proud history, while other other assistants have the benefit of preexisting relationships on the roster. Defensive line coach Lou Esposito was cornerback Bilhal Kone’s defensive coordinator at Western Michigan, Bower worked with defensive lineman Aeneas “Fub” Peebles at Duke, and Mickens worked with safety Kyle Hamilton at Notre Dame.

Role reversals

Three positions and titles on Harbaugh’s last staff are conspicuously absent from Minter’s first.

Over each of the four previous seasons, Harbaugh had one non-coordinator serve as an associate or assistant head coach: Weaver (2022-23), then the Ravens’ defensive line coach; pass game coordinator Chris Hewitt (2024); and running backs coach Willie Taggart (2025). Under Minter, there are no such distinctions in Year 1.

With Chuck Smith not retained in Baltimore, the pass rush coach has also been eliminated. Smith worked with the defensive linemen, linebackers and the pass rush’s other pieces, a unit that struggled mightily last season. Although Minter has given a few position coaches broad purviews — Ledford is the run game coordinator, for instance, and Mickens is the pass game coordinator — there is no coach overseeing the defensive front overall. Perhaps that responsibility will fall largely to Weaver, a former defensive lineman himself, who merged the Ravens’ defensive line and outside linebacker meetings in 2023 after Smith’s hire.

Under Doyle, the Ravens have traded a run game coordinator for a pass game coordinator. Former run game coordinator Travis Switzer, whose work with the team’s rushing attack over the past two years was well regarded, followed former Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken to Cleveland and will serve as the Browns’ offensive coordinator. The Ravens did not find a replacement for that position, instead hiring Brady, the Chargers’ pass game coordinator, for the same role in Baltimore, a position that did not exist under Harbaugh.

College material

The Ravens turned to the college ranks to help fill out their defensive staff, hiring Bower (Duke), Esposito (Michigan), Mickens (Notre Dame), Taylor (Nebraska) and Volker (Navy).

But, while they should help refresh the Ravens’ approach after a disappointing 2025, their arrival doesn’t necessarily herald a youth movement on staff. The median age of the Ravens’ defensive staff when assembled last offseason — coordinator Zach Orr and his seven position coaches — was 36, with five staffers 36 or younger. Senior defensive assistant and secondary coach Chuck Pagano, then 64, was the team’s only graybeard, with the 55-year-old Smith not far behind.

The median age of the Ravens’ current defensive staff — Weaver and his six position coaches — is 38. The range of ages is narrower, however, with none younger than the 30-year-old Taylor and none older than the 48-year-old Esposito.

On offense, the median age of Doyle and his seven position coaches is 35.5, with a similar range in ages. Doyle, at 29, is the youngest, while Ledford, 49, is the oldest. Lombardi and Brady are 54 and 46, respectively.

“I’m looking for leaders and connectors and relationship builders and schematic expertise, but most importantly, guys that the players believe in, that are willing to dive deep and build really strong relationships with the players,” Minter said at his introductory news conference last month. “I think [we will excel] when they feel that it’s collaborative, and they feel that it’s ours and not just the coaches’, and [not], ‘This is what the players do,’ and, ‘This is what the coaches do.’”