OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The NFL Top 100 is voted on by players. Lamar Jackson, the league’s two-time MVP, was given the 69th spot by his peers on this year’s list. His response when reporters asked him about it at Ravens training camp on Wednesday was measured: “I don’t care about rankings.”
His new head coach’s response was not. “There aren’t 68 better players than Lamar Jackson,” Jesse Minter said.
That exchange, on the record within hours of the Ravens’ first full-team practice at the Under Armour Performance Center, tells you what this training camp is actually about. The Ravens went 8-9 in 2025 and missed the playoffs. Minter, who made his reputation building Michigan’s defense into a national championship unit before taking over in Baltimore, inherited a team with legitimate AFC contention talent and two consecutive years of it going unleveraged. He does not have patience for his quarterback being underestimated, and Jackson, entering his age-30 season, does not appear to have patience for much else.
Jackson has won two MVP awards and has not reached a Super Bowl. The 2025 season that ended at 8-9 accelerated an offseason that removed most of the previous coaching staff and handed Minter the keys. Safety Kyle Hamilton, one of the team’s most analytically precise veterans, watched Jackson work through individual drills Wednesday and told reporters he believes his quarterback has gotten faster this offseason. Not “looked sharp,” not coordinator praise designed to keep a franchise player happy. A specific physical observation from a player who defends against him in practice every day. That detail matters.
Jackson said at camp that he wants the Ravens to approach this season the way the Knicks approached their 53-year championship drought that ended this past June: stack daily work rather than fixate on an outcome. For a two-time MVP who has absorbed years of playoff failure framing, the framework is telling. He says he is thinking about Wednesday’s practice. That is a way of saying that February is the only thing he is thinking about.
Minter told reporters Wednesday that the staff has “a great plan and vision for maximizing the best players,” according to NBC Sports’ training camp coverage. New offensive coordinator Declan Doyle is rebuilding the scheme around Jackson’s particular abilities, with Minter emphasizing that he wants to get wide receiver Zay Flowers the ball “in as many ways as possible.” On the defensive side, Kyle Hamilton is absorbing the expanded responsibility that comes with a head coach whose identity was built on defensive scheme design. Minter ran some of the most complex coverages in college football at Michigan. What translates to the NFL in year one is a process the Ravens are just beginning.
Derrick Henry is 32. He participated in all the camp activities Wednesday, including an ALS ice bucket challenge honoring former Ravens players affected by the disease, and appeared in good health. Henry ran for over 1,900 yards in his first season in Baltimore and was the most dramatic rushing story in the league that year. The Ravens went 8-9 in 2025 anyway, which is the uncomfortable number in any conversation about what Henry can produce in a third season with the organization. Whether his physical output at 32 resembles what it was at 30 is a question only contact football can answer, and that is still months away.
The return of defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike matters in ways the depth chart does not fully capture. He missed nearly all of last season with a neck injury that took him down in Week 2. He passed his physical Wednesday and was removed from the physically unable to perform list. Minter said the team is taking a measured approach to his return: “It’s still a process.” The Ravens’ defensive collapse in 2025 was most pronounced along the front, and Madubuike’s presence is the largest personnel upgrade the defense receives without a new signing.
Jackson’s 69th ranking is, on its face, absurd. He is a former unanimous MVP. The players who ranked him there know that. What the number actually reflects is the hangover that follows a losing season for a franchise quarterback: his peers registered the Ravens’ failure in the most direct way available to them, which is to question his place in the hierarchy. Minter’s counter is not just loyalty. It is a statement of organizational intent. The Ravens’ 2026 season is a referendum on whether Jackson, at 29, has a coaching staff that can finally build around what he is rather than around what the league expects NFL offenses to look like.
Jackson, for his part, says he is not carrying it. His ranking response included both “I don’t care about rankings” and “It is what it is,” the same measured cadence he has brought to questions about Super Bowl windows for three years. Minter is not measured about any of this. “There aren’t 68 better players than Lamar Jackson” is the way a new head coach tells his roster what the standard is going to be. Baltimore has not heard that kind of certainty from a coach in some time. What it produces is the question this camp has to begin answering.
