BALTIMORE — A 33-year-old unemployed Jesse Minter sat across from John Harbaugh.

It was 2017. Minter was interviewing for a coaching assistant job in Baltimore. His resume showed six years of defensive coordinator experience piloting turnarounds at Indiana State, then Georgia State. Harbaugh heard all about it from Minter’s father, Rick, who hired the former Ravens coach at University of Cincinnati 20 years earlier.

“I know you know how to break down and attack an offense,” Harbaugh told Minter.

But he needed to see it for himself.

So, he handed Minter a catalog of one NFL team’s offensive film. The assignment: draw up a report on everything he learned, then present to Harbaugh and his staff how he might scheme against it. Be back in three hours.

He aced it. The Ravens hired Minter that same day.

Nine years and three coaching stops later, Minter returned to Owings Mills, this time in mid-January for a second-round interview to take Harbaugh’s old job after 18 seasons.

Owner Steve Bisciotti left the team facility impressed by Minter’s vision while general manager Eric DeCosta lauded his “brilliant football mind and spirit” in a joint statement.

The Ravens hired Minter last week to be the fourth coach in franchise history. He’ll be formally introduced Thursday morning. The Baltimore Sun spoke with a dozen people close to Minter, a group of interviewees that includes fellow coaches and current and former players, to understand why Baltimore believes the defensive-minded, first-time head coach is the right person to get the Ravens over the playoff hump.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he was destined to be a head coach in the NFL,” said P.J. Volker, Navy’s defensive coordinator who rose through the ranks alongside Minter and was a groomsman at his wedding. “He’s ready for this opportunity. I think everybody that’s been around him knew this was gonna happen, it was just a matter of when.”

‘Jesse busted his [butt]’

Minter, 42, was born into football.

By his second birthday, Rick had coached at five programs. Jesse was in middle school when Cincinnati hired Rick to be the Bearcats’ head coach. There was a wealth of knowledge at his disposal. The list of assistant coaches who passed through during his tenure is impressive: Harbaugh, Mike Tomlin, Rex Ryan and Jimbo Fisher, to name a few.

It’s no surprise that Minter, as a wide receiver at Division III Mount St. Joseph University, approached his craft like a stereotypical coach’s son. He studied the game in ways his teammates wouldn’t. Minter knew his role, but he also took it upon himself to understand assignments for every teammate on both sides of the ball. “They were worried about what they did,” former Mount St. Joseph defensive coordinator Jim Hilvert said. “He wanted to know the whole picture.”

So, when he graduated in 2005, he was ready to jump right into coaching, first as a Notre Dame defensive intern, then two seasons as a graduate assistant at Cincinnati. Both roles were a byproduct of Rick’s connections. Dad helped get his foot in the door, but Minter has earned his keep at every step.

“He didn’t come up with a silver spoon thinking he knew everything,” said Notre Dame senior analyst Trent Miles, who hired Minter at Indiana State and then brought him to Georgia State. “Jesse busted his [butt] and learned and studied. He learned from some of the best. I think it shows.”

When Minter joined Miles’ staff, arriving in Terre Haute in 2009, the Sycamores were buried beneath the nation’s longest losing streak. They hadn’t won a game in three years. If Minter wanted to establish credibility, he would have to build it one install at a time, developing key relationships along the way.

“It was arguably the worst program in college football at the time,” Miles said. “We didn’t have it easy. He had to bust his tail in recruiting. He has great relationships with players.”

Minter’s mentees still recall a young coach learning how to command a room, still shaping the language and structure of his defense. Ahead of Minter’s second season, his father, Rick, joined the staff, accelerating his son’s growth and sharpening his confidence.

Former Indiana State linebacker Dillon Painter still has the playbook from those years, a large binder that he and his teammates jokingly label, “Minter’s original bible.”

“It was like this big puzzle,” Painter said. “Every single person, if they did what they were coached to do based on what they were seeing, it ended up being an extremely successful play. Coach Minter has this ability to put people in positions to be successful, and he utilizes. Obviously there’s 11 guys on the field, but with him, it’s about depth.

“We were almost like chess pieces, and he was constantly able to put us in the right positions to be successful.”

By Minter’s third and fourth seasons, Indiana State evolved into one of the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s top defenses, punctuated by a stunning October 2012 road win over North Dakota State, an FCS powerhouse that hadn’t lost at home in three years. Minter’s defense recorded three takeaways, including two interceptions returned for touchdowns.

“To be quite honest, on our flight home, we all knew, there’s no way this staff is staying,” Painter said. “That was the pinnacle for that staff. … No one said it out loud, but we all knew Coach Minter was destined for much greater heights.”

As they expected, Miles was hired from Indiana State to Georgia State. He brought most of his staff with him.

Minter didn’t replicate what worked at Indiana State and implement it at Georgia State. Minter “started from ground zero and built a defense that could stifle opponents in the Sun Belt [Conference],” Volker said.

By 2015, he was responsible for the most improved defense in the Football Bowl Subdivision. He was nominated for the Broyles Award, which recognizes the nation’s top assistant coach. The following year, though, Georgia State won two games and Miles was fired. So went Minter. He later called it “one of the best things that ever happened” in his career.

Minter landed in Baltimore the ensuing season, working under defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale and linebackers coach Mike Macdonald. Together, they rewrote Baltimore’s defense by diagramming unique pass rush plans and non-traditional zone coverages. It produced back-to-back AFC North titles (2018 and 2019).

Jim Harbaugh came calling in 2022. He hired Minter to be Michigan’s DC, inheriting a foundation from his predecessor Macdonald and attempting to evolve it into something even more minacious.

Ravens wide receiver Cornelius Johnson, who played at Michigan from 2019 to 2023, felt the Minter experience every day in practice.

“He would switch a lot, experiment and counter in real time,” Johnson said. “If something was working earlier, he’d flip it. Different disguises, different blitzes. It was always competitive.”

Michigan’s defense under Minter leaned heavily into nickel and dime personnel, often flooding the field with physical defensive backs or forcing offenses to process information and puzzling personnel presnap. Similar to Indiana State’s upset victory over North Dakota State, Minter’s Wolverines defense again recorded a signature win: a 26-0 shutout of Iowa in the 2023 Big Ten championship game.

Michigan’s statement victory, which secured them a coveted spot in the then-four-team College Football Playoff, featured three takeaways and four sacks from Minter’s unit.

“We shut them down completely. Iowa had absolutely nothing going,” Johnson said. “That’s one of his staple games. We don’t win those championships without Coach Minter.”

Amid the celebratory locker room scene, Harbaugh awarded a game ball to Minter. Michigan would go on to complete its perfect season with a win over Washington and star quarterback Michael Penix Jr. in the national championship game, but this moment marked something deeper than a schematic triumph.

For Minter, it was the culmination of years spent refining ideas, absorbing failure and learning how to teach with purpose.

A great teacher and motivator

Minter once described his first stint in Baltimore as “four years of going to master’s level classes.” After the 2020 season, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea invited Minter to Nashville, Tennessee, essentially to pitch his thesis.

Lea was curious about how Minter helped revamp the Ravens’ defense. Interviewing Minter to be Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator, Lea pressed the rising star on his coaching philosophies. How might that translate to a collaborative environment back at the college level? Did Minter have an ego needing to be coat-checked?

Lea left thinking, “He’s the kind of guy the coaching profession needs right now.”

Lea saw what many of Minter’s former players and fellow coaches did: an inexorable passion for football problem-solving mixed with emotional intelligence to articulate his plans in a way players gravitate toward.

That manifests in meeting rooms and in the way Minter delegates work to his staff and the collaborative nature of his defense. Volker called his friend a “great listener.” Miles said he’s “like a bright light walking into the room.”

Harold Etheridge witnessed that closely for nearly a decade, working alongside Minter as opposing coordinators at Indiana State and Georgia State.

“Jesse’s a players-type coach,” said Etheridge, now an offensive line coach at Illinois State. “He’s energetic. He’s detailed. Guys love playing for him because he’s going to get the best out of you. He’s not an arrogant guy. Coaching is all about trust; they’ve got to trust you, you’ve got to trust them. Jesse’s a great teacher and motivator.”

Similar to his study habits as a player, Minter encourages his players to understand the entire system, not just their particular assignment. He’s built a reputation for dissecting defense through the lens of an offense.

“He made us all more cerebral,” Painter said. “It wasn’t just, ‘do your job.’ It was understanding why? Understanding the whole picture.

“He made intentional efforts developing relationships with everyone in the building,” Johnson said. “Not just defense.”

‘It doesn’t surprise anyone’

In 2017, John Harbaugh handed Minter a stack of offensive film with three hours to prove himself.

Nearly a decade later, the assignment is far larger. Minter is tasked with leading a locker room that features a two-time NFL Most Valuable Player in quarterback Lamar Jackson and a defensive unit that’s strayed from its longtime franchise identity.

Before Minter was named Baltimore’s fourth head coach, a successor to his former boss and the franchise’s winningest coach, people who’ve shared meeting rooms and practice fields with him say he prepared his whole life for this new title.

“To remember all of this that vividly years later, clearly Coach Minter had an impact on me as a defensive football player,” Painter said. “No one that you’ll talk to who’s ever been around him is surprised by him now being the head football coach of an NFL franchise.”

Starting Thursday, in Owings Mills, that sterling reputation meets immediate championship expectations.

Can he deliver?

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