OWINGS MILLS, Md. – The NFL’s annual player poll had placed Lamar Jackson lower than two MVP trophies and several seasons of league-dominating play seemed to warrant. The specific number was not the point. The slight was.
When Jackson stepped onto the Owings Mills practice field Thursday to open Baltimore’s 2026 training camp, the model he offered for the season was not drawn from football. He cited the New York Knicks – the franchise that just captured the NBA championship by treating every day of preparation as non-negotiable, by making consistency a culture before it ever became a confetti shower in June. Jackson wants his Ravens to carry that same urgency, from July to February, without letting up. “I don’t care about rankings,” he said. What he cares about is arriving, in February, with something nobody will argue with.
Baltimore gave him reasons to believe it’s possible.
The most immediate evidence arrived on the defensive side of the ball in the form of Trey Hendrickson, the pass rusher who was already turning heads on his first day in camp. Linebacker Roquan Smith did not speak in abstractions about what the addition means. Hendrickson’s presence, Smith said, “lightens the load for everyone.” From a player who has spent years as the Ravens’ most disruptive defensive force, that kind of endorsement is not camp-week noise. It is an acknowledgment that the position group just became materially harder to block.
The Ravens signed Hendrickson to address the single most consistent limitation of Baltimore’s recent postseason runs – a pass rush that was good but rarely dominant enough to carry the defense through games that actually matter. Smith has been exceptional. The secondary has the pieces. What the Ravens needed was a presence that forces offensive coordinators to account for it on every snap, a player whose first step off the line changes the picture for the quarterback before the ball is even snapped. The early returns from camp suggest they may have found one, according to Bleacher Report.
For Jackson, the defensive upgrade is only part of the equation. The larger question this summer is whether new offensive coordinator Declan Doyle’s system will work the way Baltimore is betting it will. Dan Orlovsky, with genuine offensive system knowledge and no stake in the Ravens’ success, has publicly urged patience with Doyle’s scheme. That is worth heeding. New coordinator systems take time. The alignment between a two-time MVP quarterback and a first-year coordinator is not instant, no matter how talented either party is. The Ravens are asking their offense to adapt, rebuild connective tissue, and be productive – all at once, in a compressed training camp timeline.
Jackson spent part of his offseason boxing with wide receiver Zay Flowers, which reads more as statement than workout log. Flowers is the player Baltimore is building the new offense around. Head coach Jesse Minter has already said he wants to get Flowers the ball in as many ways as possible, and general manager Eric DeCosta has signaled interest in extending Flowers’ contract before training camp is finished. The implication is clear: whatever Doyle’s system ultimately becomes, Flowers is at its center, and the Ravens are investing accordingly.
What Baltimore cannot afford is for any of this to take too long. The conference has not been standing still. While the AFC’s opening camp week has produced its own storylines elsewhere, the Ravens are making a more sweeping bet: that a rebuilt coaching staff, a remade defensive line, and a quarterback with something to prove is the combination that gets them to February.
Defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike, a Pro Bowl presence whose 2025 season ended in Week 2 with a neck injury, has been cleared by doctors and is working back through individual drills as he rebuilds conditioning, according to NBC Sports. The Ravens are managing his return carefully. His full availability matters enormously – not as depth, but as the interior force that makes the entire defensive system more viable. Hendrickson on the edge is a significantly different problem for opposing offensive lines when Madubuike is collapsing the pocket from inside.
First-round pick Vega Ioane is also making early impressions, the latest example of a Baltimore draft process that consistently turns selections into functional contributors faster than expected. Ioane will not be asked to carry anything this season. He will be asked to contribute, and early camp observations suggest that bar is not going to be a challenge.
The unknowns are real, and Jackson knows it. Doyle has never called plays in a regular-season NFL game. Minter is learning his job as a head coach in real time, in a market where the gap between a deep playoff run and a franchise-defining championship is narrow. The preseason opener against Philadelphia on August 15 will not reveal much. Chemistry is not built in a practice, or in an August game. It accumulates over four months and is tested in January – which is exactly what Jackson appears to understand when he invokes the Knicks’ standard of daily consistency.
What this team has not yet answered is whether the offense can execute at a Super Bowl level under a coordinator who has not proven that in game conditions yet. The defense, for all its new additions, is still waiting for its most important interior piece to return to full form. And the head coach is a first-year. These are not small questions.
Jackson is not waiting on answers. He is demanding that his teammates show up every day the way the Knicks did – with the understanding that championships are constructed in July, not November. Whether Baltimore has assembled the pieces to build what he’s describing is the question four months of football will settle.
The blueprint says yes. The proof is still coming.
