Clark Lea was hired as the head football coach at Vanderbilt in December 2020. About a month later, Lea brought aboard Jesse Minter, who had been a defensive assistant with the Ravens for the previous four seasons, as defensive coordinator.
Minter, now 42, only lasted one season at Vanderbilt before becoming the defensive coordinator at Michigan under Jim Harbaugh, but he stayed in touch with Lea, who is thrilled to see Minter get the opportunity to be the head coach of the Ravens.
“This is one of my closest friends in coaching, but I’ve learned so much from him,” Lea said on Glenn Clark Radio May 7. “So much of what he’s learned the last few years he’s been willing to pass along to me. I’m grateful for that and I’m so excited for him. I know this is a new challenge. Like any new challenge, there’s going to be unseen adversity ahead, but this is a really smart guy who treats people the right way, who is a very skilled football coach who I believe will be wildly successful in Baltimore.”
Vanderbilt went 2-10 in 2021, Minter’s lone season in Nashville. The Commodores beat Colorado State, 24-21, and UConn, 30-28, in the first half of the season before the bottom fell out. Vanderbilt lost to Georgia, Florida and Mississippi State by a combined score of 149-6 but stayed engaged against South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, Ole Miss and Tennessee.
Still, the Commodores allowed 35.8 points and 457.9 yards per game for the season, both marks last in the SEC. However, Lea liked how Minter handled himself in a season during which the Vanderbilt was short on SEC-level talent.
“I was so impressed with how Jesse evolved as a coordinator throughout the season, the way he was able to organize his staff to be efficient,” Lea said. “I just felt like there was such growth and learning going on. He always had an instinct for play-calling. I felt like that allowed us to win games.
“We won two and in both of them we were fighting tooth and nail to the end. Subtle adjustments he made, subtle calls he’d make, the way he could kind of anticipate what was next offensively, I thought that gave us a chance to win those games. It gave us a chance to be competitive in games where we really were outclassed on the field in terms of talent.”
Minter is now tasked with getting the Ravens over the proverbial hump following years of postseason heartbreak and a disappointing 8-9 season in 2025. John Harbaugh was fired by the Ravens in January following an 18-year stint as the head coach in Baltimore and was replaced by Minter a couple of weeks later.
Minter arrives back in Baltimore as one of the best-regarded defensive minds in the sport following productive stints at Michigan (2022-2023) and with the Los Angeles Chargers (2024-2025). He will need to turn around a unit that allowed 23.4 points and 354.5 yards per game, not up to the historical standards of the franchise.
“He is super engaged with his team, with his players — with his family, honestly,” Lea said. “When he coaches, you can see all of his roles — husband, father, coach. They all surface in the way he relates to people and the way he takes care of people. He’s just smart. I think what the modern coach understands is our role is about impact. It’s about aligning people and galvanizing people to do something that maybe they can’t do on their own but they can do as part of a group.”
For more from Lea, listen to the full interview here:
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