If you could put a face on the strength of humility, I’m not sure how much better it could get than Anthony Weaver.

At 45, Weaver retains the imposing stature that once made him a second-round draft pick in Baltimore. But his soft-spoken articulation — along with the wisps of gray in his beard — hints at the wisdom and patience he’s accrued over a lifetime in the game.

Of the four Ravens coaches who took the stage Wednesday morning, Weaver was the oldest. He was also the only one who won’t call his own plays next season.

Still, listening to Weaver talk gives a sense of the gravitas he brings to a locker room, a trait every coach needs. And it makes it hard to imagine how five franchises (Baltimore, Arizona, Atlanta, Buffalo and Pittsburgh) interviewed him for their head coaching positions — and all of them passed on him.

“This job and being with Coach [Jesse] Minter and the staff and these players is hardly a consolation prize,” Weaver said with a steely grin.

It might not be a consolation for Weaver, who is overqualified for the job he’ll have this fall. But landing Weaver, who last coached the defensive line in Baltimore during a dominant 2023 season, is truly a coup for the Ravens and Minter.

It reflects poorly on the NFL that a coach as respected as Weaver, who has been interviewing for head coaching jobs for years, finds himself in a non-play-calling role after two seasons in charge of the defense in Miami.

This offseason, 10 head coaching jobs opened — yet none of the new hires was Black, in spite of a cycle in which Brian Flores, Vance Joseph and Weaver were widely viewed as top candidates. Five of the new head coaching hires (including his boss) are younger than Weaver.

If anyone knows what it’s like to be passed over in the coaching ranks, it’s Weaver. And it’s harder to imagine someone handling humbling circumstances with more grace. He may be one of the unintentional faces of the NFL’s career stagnancy for Black coaches, but that face will never show you the true weight of that burden.

“I’d be lying to you to sit here and say that I wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t get a head job,” Weaver said. “But, ultimately, I just came back to, ‘Why am I doing this to begin with?’”

Weaver is here to win a Super Bowl, he said, something the Ravens expect to compete for in 2026 with their new regime. Beyond that?

“I’m here to serve players and help them reach whatever God-given potential they have,” Weaver said. “I don’t need to be a head coach to do that. I can certainly do that from this seat.”

It’s a seat Weaver could have easily occupied two seasons ago. When Mike Macdonald was hired away by the Seattle Seahawks in 2024, Weaver was widely considered a possible replacement at defensive coordinator, along with linebackers coach Zach Orr and defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson.

John Harbaugh chose Orr, a former player 12 years Weaver’s junior whom he had once coached at North Texas. Shortly thereafter, Weaver left for sunny, state tax-free South Florida to lead the Dolphins defense — “that was a plus,” he said.

Only Weaver can speak to how painful it was to be passed over for the Ravens DC job. He would have been a natural candidate, given that he was also assistant head coach. But even reaching that role now, what he called “the main coordinator position in the National Football League,” he tactfully sidestepped a question about whether he was disappointed then.

“I think that’d probably be a question more suited for John, who I love and respect, and I love Zach Orr,” he said. “Shoot, I coached Zach in college, so it’s not like, when that hire happened, I was shocked, because I have so much love and respect for Zach, too. So it certainly made sense.”

In the chest-beating, hyper-macho world of football, watching Weaver’s soft touch is a remarkable, refreshing counterbalance, if a bit bittersweet.

This is not to say Weaver is some wilting flower. Quite the opposite.

Weaver was known in Miami for having high accountability and tough love for players. First and foremost, he demands bruising physicality from his defenses. He gained viral traction for a Miami news conference when he said, “I’m a nice guy. I smile and all those things. But all of our problems we need to solve can be solved with violence.”

As the new Ravens coordinator, Weaver painted the picture of a return to a fearsome culture — back in the days of Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs, when opposing offenses were quivering before the game even kicked off.

“​​I instantly go back to this shirt from when I was a rookie,” Weaver said. “They used to say, ‘It’s better to be feared than loved,’ and it had a Baltimore Ravens [logo] on it. I know it wasn’t an officially issued shirt, but I go straight to that.”

Although Minter seems to have strongly fleshed-out ideas about the schemes he wants to run, he knows Weaver can help him build culture — or perhaps more accurately revamp the culture that has lost its edge the last two seasons.

“There’s so many great qualities of him knowing the surroundings, knowing what it means to be a Raven, knowing how we’re trying to rebrand that a little bit and make it a new age of a way to ‘play like a Raven,’” Minter said. “And so I’m super confident in Anthony’s ability to lead our defense, and then us to work very close together in the game-planning process.”

It’s hard to imagine how Weaver has stayed so poised after being overlooked this many times. There probably aren’t many NFL coaches who would take on a coordinator role for a coach they lost out to in the interview process and not call plays to boot.

Weaver sees it, however, as a chance to serve the players he got to know in his first stint in Baltimore and maybe finish the job with a Super Bowl win.

It is precisely the combination of strength, humility and presence that makes Weaver a compelling candidate as a future head coach. Perhaps next year an NFL team will be ready to give him that opportunity.

Until then, the league’s loss is the Ravens’ gain.