Chapter 1: What are the latest coaching hires in the NFL?
Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shiel Kapadia. Today we are talking coaching carousel. Take a little break from championship weekend because we wanted to get to the Ravens hire of Jesse Minter. We wanted to get to the Steelers hire of Mike McCarthy and then a big OC hire by the Los Angeles Chargers bringing in Mike McDaniel.
So we're going to talk about all those things and then we do get into the discourse of around one of the championship games in that fourth and one decision by Sean Payton, because that was such a big topic of conversation on Monday after the games. My guest today, the ringers, Austin Gale. Let's take a break. We come back and we talk to Austin. The Ringer NFL show is presented by FanDuel.
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Chapter 2: Who is Jesse Minter and what does he bring to the Ravens?
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Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with Austin Gale. We are talking coaching carousel. We're going to start off, Austin, with the Ravens. Made a hire that we haven't talked about yet. Bringing in Jesse Minter, Chargers defensive coordinator. Give me your thoughts, your first impressions on Minter. What do you got?
I kind of want to lay out the resume first for those who don't know about Jesse Mentor. So he was with the Baltimore Ravens from 2017 to 2020, overlapped with Mike McDonald there. He was a defensive assistant coach. Then he went to Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, was the defense coordinator there, won a national championship in 2023.
Chapter 3: What impact will Mike McCarthy have on the Steelers?
In 2023, they had the best defense in all of college football in points allowed and yards allowed per game. Goes to the Chargers, D.C. there, again under Jim Harbaugh. And they've had a top six defense by most metrics each of the two seasons that he's been there. So he's been a very impressive defensive play caller pretty much since he started with Michigan there a few years ago.
And now what Baltimore is getting, I think, is a guy on the cutting edge of defensive scheme and play calling that you see with Mike McDonald now in Seattle going to the Super Bowl. I think that's what the Baltimore Ravens want. right?
Like letting Mike McDonald leave a few years ago there, they feel like they're getting the best version of that again in Jesse mentor, a guy that's going to come in and help them. I think like really take what a defense that is super talented, Kyle Hamilton, all these other guys and really elevate it and bring it to the top six, five in the NFL. And I think that's what they're getting right away.
It's still TBD on what he's going to be everywhere else, like hiring an offensive play caller. How is he going to be as a head coach and splitting those responsibilities? That's always TBD with first year head coaches. But in terms of,
Chapter 4: How will Mike McDaniel influence the Chargers' offense?
who they're getting as a defensive play caller and a defensive schemer. I think he's one of the top guys in the league.
It's hard to look at this under any other lens, for me at least, and be like, they are trying to find their version of Mike McDonald. McDonald was in the building. McDonald left. McDonald's been awesome. McDonald's in the Super Bowl. They fired John Harbaugh. And they're like, hmm, is there another... one of those out there. Let's go try Jesse Minter. And they might've got it right.
This hire makes a lot of sense to me for what you laid out partially. They're familiar with him. He knows the culture. He knows the GM. He knows the owner. He's been in the building. They know his work ethic. They know his personality. They know his collaboration with other people.
Chapter 5: What was the significance of Sean Payton's fourth-and-1 call?
So it takes out some of that uncertainty with hiring a new head coach. I like that. I like the defensive acumen. Like you said, he's pretty proven in that respect. And the Ravens defense has been up and down. I think the other stuff I look at when I look at, is a guy going to be a good head coach or not? Obviously there's the leadership.
How do they connect with players, which is hard to predict, but it feels like he's pretty good there. And then I think the big one where if you're not an offensive head coach and specifically with this quarterback, with this team's window is the,
Chapter 6: How do coaching decisions impact team performance?
Who are you bringing to the table as an offensive coordinator? What are your ideas? And it's very tricky here, Austin, with the Ravens because the Athletics reporting that Lamar Jackson kind of likes a Cliff Kingsbury. They're also reporting that, you know what? The Ravens had Joe Brady in as a potential head coach. And while they didn't hire him there, they were impressed.
Could he be an offensive coordinator? Does Jesse Minter have someone else? So there's all these things at play. It's not just one thing that makes up a great head coach, but I do think that's the next big domino to fall specifically when you have Lamar Jackson and you have this window is who are you going to bring in to run the offense?
I think there are good signs already with the kind of coaching talent he's going to be able to bring in. There are reports that the Atlanta Falcons offensive line coach could be joining Jesse Minter. And I think he's done a really good job in Atlanta helping Bijan have all the success that he did there. And I think the other piece of this too is who is making this decision for Minter?
Chapter 7: What are the implications of hiring a first-time head coach?
That's very interesting.
Is it who the ownership and leadership liked in the head coaching interviews, like a Joe Brady? Is it who Lamar Jackson wants with Cliff Kingsbury? Or is it going to be someone that Minter wants to bring in? There's been some reporting that maybe it's Marcus Brady, one of the offensive assistant coaches with the Los Angeles Chargers.
I think that's really going to dictate how we view the Minter hiring right out of the gate. If they bring in Brady or Kingsbury, and the reporting is that that's who Jackson wants, or that's who Bashadi wanted, then it shifts gears in terms of like, okay, Minter, control your side of the ball. control the team, set the culture.
And if this offensive play caller doesn't work out, we're going to roll the dice again. I think the worst case scenario when you're hiring a... I think it's been made too black and white with like, are you hiring an offensive-minded coach or a defensive-minded coach? You know what the worst case scenario is? You hire Jonathan Gannon.
And then the defense in Arizona, every year he's been there, was in the bottom three pretty much by every metric. Like...
I'm glad someone noticed, Austin, because all I see... Jonathan Gannon must have the best PR in the NFL, where it's like, has no one been paying attention to that defense for three years? Thank you. It's been terrible. That kind of thought is welcome here with me, Austin.
If you hire Minter... And then he's the defensive mind head coach and the defense sucks. Yeah. That's the worst case scenario. I don't think it's if he doesn't figure out offensive play caller right away or, you know, obviously they want to maximize this window, this kind of shrinking window with Lamar Jackson as he gets older and now 29 years old.
But I think the first offensive play caller hire, it's going to be kind of determined by ownership or leadership, it seems. And then after that, it's are you re-rolling the dice? Like D'Amico Ryans, it took time. Mike McDonald didn't hire Clint Kubiak right away, right? It was that guy they were making fun of a while ago. Ryan Grubb, yeah. Ryan Grubb, right?
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Chapter 8: What can we learn from the discussion about coaching strategies?
Yeah, right. It's okay, right? If you do one or two swings of the bat, an offensive play caller, if your defense is top of the line. And that's what we've immediately seen with Mike McDonald and didn't immediately see with a guy like Jonathan Gannett.
they immediately have a very high ceiling. If that defense is playing well next year, and that offense can get back to it. It wasn't this year, but the year before, remember, it's the best offense in the NFL. I do my rankings at the beginning of every year, and I was like, well, Ravens, are they going to be one or two?
There was a high expectation for that offense, and we've seen the ceiling with Lamar Jackson before. So it is an attractive job for an offensive coordinator. And I don't want to underrate the... culture aspect of this, which we never, it's hard to define. We know that, but I was reading Jeff's readback, a longtime Ravens beat writer in the athletic Austin.
He wrote, Steve Bishotti may not have acknowledged this publicly, but the tepid support for Harbaugh from several key players in the locker room, surely factored into the longtime head coaches dismissal, which I thought was very, very interesting. So part of the reason why they bring in a new coach and by all accounts, Again, this is kind of a crapshoot.
We are dealing with uncertainty when we say this guy's going to be a great head coach, but Minter has that going for him. It seemed like the players with the Chargers, players who have played under him previously, really like him, his personality, and play for him. him. So I think you're excited if you're a Ravens fan. You never know.
But if you were going to change things up and you said, what's the best case scenario? I think this is pretty close to a best case scenario, hiring Jesse Minter and a guy who could be there for a long time. Not saying as long as John Harbaugh, but he's a guy who you could see really being there for a long time with one of the more stable organizations in the NFL. All right. Next guy, Austin.
I don't know that we're going to be quite as positive about this, but maybe you'll surprise me and I'll be wrong. The Pittsburgh Steelers, you and I have spent about 17 hours on this podcast talking about, will the Steelers fire Mike Tomlin this year? Will he be gone? He is gone. And they hire Mike McCarthy.
I'm not going to influence the voter here and say, you just tell me, how do you think Steelers fans should feel about Mike McCarthy as their new head coach?
I'm going to start with the facts. Okay. Mike McCarthy is the third oldest coach in the NFL. Wow.
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