00:00Jesse Minter has been universally hailed as a very good hire and someone that, quite frankly, had a lot of
00:08people connected the dots, thought Jesse Minter would be the next head coach of the Ravens.
00:11He became the next head coach. Alas, you found an interesting article, Bone. I think it was in The Athletic.
00:18How daunting is the task for Jesse Minter? Because first year head coaches, it's not always pretty.
00:25It's really difficult for first year head coaches. And heck, you can even go back to the stat.
00:32Jameson Hensley covers the Ravens for ESPN. He tweeted this out immediately following the Super Bowl where Mike McDonald and
00:39the Seahawks won it.
00:41Mike McDonald in his second year in Seattle and McDonald, just the sixth head coach in the last 40 years
00:49to win a Super Bowl within the first two seasons as head coach.
00:52And the rest of the list, George Seifert with the 49ers in 1989, Barry Switzer with the Cowboys in 1995,
00:59both of them inherited very good situations.
01:02For people who were young. So Seifert took over for Bill Walsh. That was a dynasty.
01:07Switzer took over for Jimmy Johnson. That was a dynasty.
01:10So like you or I or Bellway Bend, we could have taken over that team.
01:15And as long as we didn't screw things up, as long as we didn't see Jay Stroud it, I think
01:18we'd have a pretty good shot.
01:19You're a passenger. You're long for the ride. But the rest of the list, Brian Billick, I think everybody in
01:24Baltimore, familiar with him.
01:26He won it in 2000 in his second year. Mike Tomlin with the Steelers in his second year.
01:32And Doug Peterson with the Eagles in 2017.
01:35So Billick and Peterson, eh, Tomlin's going to the whole thing.
01:38Oh, absolutely. But saying that it's so difficult and outside of the norm to win it that early on.
01:48And Jeff Howe, who covers the NFL for The Athletic, he looked at 160 hires made between 2000 and 2022.
01:59And how he did it, he broke it into criteria to award points.
02:06So each of these six are points.
02:09Length of tenure, regular season record, playoff appearances, playoff wins, Super Bowl appearances, and Super Bowl wins.
02:16And he looked at the average and what constitutes a successful hire.
02:21So season's on the job. It would be five regular season wins, 35 wins, and a 500 record.
02:28Playoff appearances, just two. Playoff wins, two. Super Bowl wins, one. Super Bowl appearances, one.
02:3760% of all head coaching hires over those 23 years failed to reach a single benchmark during that time
02:48frame.
02:49So that means 60% of the hires were failures.
02:53And the home run hires, John Harbaugh was in there, of course, having won a Super Bowl.
02:59And you think of Belichick, Dungey, John Gruden, Tom Koff, and the list goes on there.
03:05But we say all this because it's such an inexact science in hiring a head coach.
03:13And the teams that we saw in this cycle, which was a third of the league, there were 10 coaching
03:21hirings.
03:21A lot of these teams you see with regularity because they can't get it right.
03:27The Browns were in this cycle.
03:29The Raiders were in this cycle.
03:31The Titans were.
03:32The bulk of the teams, and you look at which one of these is not like the other, the Ravens,
03:38the Steelers, you don't see the Bills in this recent run.
03:43So that puts Jesse Mentor in this unique situation.
03:47And what's very favorable for Jesse Mentor, number one, he has Lamar Jackson.
03:53Number two, the AFC North is as bad as you could say it's ever been since the division realignment in
04:022002.
04:04Where, heck, look at John Harbaugh in 2008, Ken.
04:06The Browns had just won 10 games with Derek Anderson.
04:09The Steelers, they were about to win a Super Bowl in 2008.
04:12The Bengals had Carson Palmer.
04:14The AFC North's a wreck.
04:15You know, you mentioned 2008.
04:18Jesse Mentor may be inheriting a team sort of like, and not the same, but sort of like what Harb's
04:27inherited in 2008.
04:27Remember, in 2006, the Ravens went 13-3 and lost in the playoffs.
04:34That was Steve McNair, Colts, and then they bottomed out.
04:37They bottomed out in 2007.
04:39Well, two years ago, the Ravens were a playoff team that were a few drops away from going to the
04:43AFC title game.
04:44This year, they have some injuries and what have you.
04:46They bottomed out.
04:47They fired their coach.
04:49Lamar Jackson's healthy.
04:51We've documented where the Ravens are in December when Lamar Jackson is healthy.
04:56So it is possible.
04:57This is not your usual job because you have a two-time, should-be-three-time MVP because you have
05:05some pieces that aren't usually there with a team with a first-year head coach.
05:10And that's my point with this article.
05:1260% of those head coaches were complete failures that didn't reach any of those benchmarks.
05:18But a big reason for that is because it's the same terrible franchises going through hires, going through hires.
05:26We've seen one-and-done head coaches in five consecutive off-seasons now, Ken.
05:32And the stat that we brought up a lot, there are 10 job openings this year.
05:37The last time there were 10 job openings was 2022.
05:40Only two of those eight or two of those 10, excuse me, are remaining.
05:44So I think when you look at Jesse Minter, there's a real opportunity for this Ravens team to bounce back
05:55because they have their highest draft pick that they've had since Kyle Hamilton in 2022.
06:01You hope to have a healthy Lamar Jackson.
06:04And I'm also hopeful and excited to see how Eric DaCosta navigates this off-season in a different way because
06:13there are holes on this roster.
06:15Obviously, it's a small sample, but I went to that Babe Ruth birthday bash last night and they asked me
06:22to host the – they do different panels for different sports.
06:24And I hosted the Ravens panel and we had Kadri Ismael.
06:27Did you have all the Skittles with no yellow?
06:29Yes, I did.
06:30Okay, that's good.
06:31Jermaine Lewis, Bruce Laird, Stan White, et cetera.
06:34But like then there were a whole bunch of people there to ask a couple questions afterwards.
06:39But it seemed to me that the fan base, at least representative there, and the people representative there are more
06:48optimistic than you would find in those other cities because of who the Ravens are, because of Lamar Jackson, and
06:58assuming they get a deal done and people seem to be optimistic that that's going to happen.
07:02And because, quite frankly, they watched what Jesse Minter did at Michigan in the last two years with the Chargers,
07:08and they feel the defense will be better because of him and Anthony Weir.
07:13John Harbaugh had run his course in Baltimore.
07:16There was no arguing that point.
07:18And if Steve Bishotti would have opted to bring back John Harbaugh, it just – at some point it becomes
07:24the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
07:31And this is far from an exact science.
07:34Everyone loves Jesse Minter.
07:35Heck, the NFLPA report card, Jesse Minter, got an A-plus with the Chargers.
07:41So the players love him.
07:43All the guests that we've had on, they love him.
07:46Chris Rim, we talked to him, I think it was before they hired him.
07:52And he said – and remember, he covered the Ravens too.
07:55He said, quite frankly, Jesse Minter was more impressive to him in real time than McDonald was here as defensive
08:03coordinator.
08:04And that all doesn't guarantee anything.
08:07It does not guarantee anything.
08:10But I think you have to feel pretty good about this organization's track record in the fact that it's only
08:18been three hires, you know,
08:21with March Abroda, Brian Billick, and John Harbaugh.
08:25And you just hope that Jesse Minter can really hit the ground running in his rookie year.
08:29And we saw two rookie head coaches win their division last year with Liam Cohen in Jacksonville
08:34and Ben Johnson with the Bears.
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