A pair of former Ravens staffers landed in Seattle today, reuniting them with former defensive coordinator and current Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald. For the second time in a row, Baltimore will watch their former defensive coordinator join the Seahawks as Macdonald is hiring Zach Orr to be inside linebackers coach in Seattle, per Clarence Hill Jr. of All City DLLS.
Orr’s history in Baltimore was a complicated one. An undrafted linebacker out of North Texas, Orr started as a player for the Ravens, spending his first two years as a core special teamer before stepping in as a starter in Year 3, leading the team with 133 total tackles, and earning second-team All-Pro honors along with fellow starter C.J. Mosley. His All-Pro season ended with an injury that led to a congenital neck/spine condition diagnosis that would force him to retire from playing.
Orr immediately turned to coaching after coming to terms with the end of his playing career. In 2017, the Ravens hired him as a defensive analyst 12 days after he settled into retirement. Orr left in 2021 for an outside linebackers coaching position under Urban Meyer in Jacksonville, and when that didn’t work out, he returned to Baltimore as an inside linebackers coach for two years before succeeding Macdonald as defensive coordinator.
Orr’s defenses in Baltimore were streaky. In his first year as a coordinator, the Ravens defense ranked 25th in points allowed, 27th in yards allowed, and dead last in passing yards allowed through 10 weeks of play. Taking another look at his personnel, Orr made some adjustments and, with some key contributors stepping up, Baltimore fielded the NFL’s best defense across all three of those categories for the last six weeks of the season. The improvement was enough to see them finish the year ranked as the ninth-best scoring defense and the 10th-best total defense.
Similar struggles plagued the Ravens defense in 2025, but unlike in Orr’s first year, there was no major turnaround. While the team found some footing partway into the year, they finished the season ranked 18th in points allowed and 24th in yards allowed. The 30th-ranked pass defense was an especially offensive black eye for a secondary that rosters All-Pros in Kyle Hamilton and Marlon Humphrey around recent first-round picks like Nate Wiggins and Malaki Starks.
After the Ravens fired former head coach John Harbaugh, Orr interviewed for defensive coordinator jobs with the Chargers and Cowboys. Though they didn’t off him the DC job, the Cowboys kept in contact with Orr enough that he had an offer to fill the same inside linebackers coaching job in Dallas, per Hill. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Raiders had also requested to interview Orr for their open DC position, but Orr chose the option to reunite with Macdonald over the job in Dallas or the interview with Las Vegas. Macdonald had wanted to bring Orr as his DC when he first left for the head coaching job in Seattle, but the Ravens prevented that from occurring by promoting Orr themselves. Now, Macdonald gets his man, and Orr gets to continue developing as a coach in his system.
Joining Orr in the move to Seattle will be former Ravens director of strategy/assistant quarterbacks coach Daniel Stern. The Ravens hired someone to Stern’s position when it seemed he might follow Todd Monken to Cleveland, but instead, Stern will defect to the team’s former defensive coordinator, according to Schefter.
Lastly, Baltimore finalized their new coaching staff under head coach Jesse Minter yesterday. We have covered nearly every staff change in previous posts on the site, but the Ravens‘ announcement provided a few new details. First, initially thought to be hired as director of football logistics and defensive consultant, respectively, Christina DeRuyter and Rick Minter’s titles have been reported to be chief of staff to the head coach and football analyst. The team’s announcement also broke news of the promotion of Andrew Rogan to a role as defensive quality control coach. Rogan had joined the team in 2021 as a player personnel assistant and was promoted to coaching/scouting analyst in 2023. He’ll now transfer fully over to the coaching side of the staff.
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