The Baltimore Ravens entered the 2025 season as one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl. Lamar Jackson was coming off back-to-back MVP-caliber seasons. The roster was loaded. The expectations were as high as they had been in years.
Then the season happened. Injuries derailed it. Lamar missed time. The team that was supposed to be in the AFC Championship conversation finished 8-9 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
If you want to know what motivates a Baltimore Ravens team entering 2026, start there. A franchise with championship ambitions that spent the offseason watching other teams play January football from home. A quarterback who finished 2025 on a strong personal note but watched the team around him collapse. A coaching staff that was overhauled precisely because what was in place was not good enough.
The Ravens have something to prove. And a healthy Lamar Jackson with a chip on his shoulder is among the most dangerous things in the NFL.
Lamar Jackson With Something to Prove
There is a version of this story that says the 2025 season was a fluke -- injuries, circumstance, a roster that underperformed its talent -- and that the 2026 Ravens are simply the team everyone expected last year, finally playing like it.
That version might be right. Lamar Jackson is still the most dynamic playmaker at the quarterback position in football. He finished 2025 on a strong personal stretch, putting up numbers that reminded everyone watching why he is a two-time MVP, and he enters training camp healthy, locked in, and with the kind of quiet urgency that tends to produce excellent football in October and November.
The Ravens are betting on that urgency being the engine of a bounce-back season. When Jackson is healthy, focused, and operating in a system built around his strengths, this offense has no ceiling. The question coming out of 2025 was not whether Jackson is good enough -- it was whether the structure around him is built to win when the moments are biggest.
New offensive coordinator Declan Doyle is the answer to that question, or at least the beginning of one.
Declan Doyle and a New Offensive Identity
The most significant change in Baltimore this offseason is not a free agent signing or a draft pick. It is the installation of Declan Doyle as one of the NFL's youngest offensive playcallers.
Doyle carries influences from Sean Payton and Ben Johnson -- two of the most creative offensive minds in the league -- and his scheme is built around motion, misdirection, three-receiver personnel, more under-center play-action for Jackson, and a tight end used as an H-back rather than the traditional inline option the Ravens have leaned on for years. For a team that has often been dismissed as a run-first, predictable offense when the defense takes it away, this is a meaningful philosophical shift.
The early camp reports are what you want to hear. Jackson looks comfortable in the new system. The offense has shown more pre-snap movement and more varied formations than Baltimore has used in recent seasons. And Dan Orlovsky, among others who have watched the early work, is taking a wait-and-see approach -- not skeptical, just appropriately measured about whether the new concepts translate from camp to September.
Doyle is young enough that this is his first full season as a playcaller. The talent is clearly there. Whether he can manage the pressure of a full NFL season in a market as demanding as Baltimore, and whether his system holds up when defenses have a month of film, will be answered in real time. But the upside is significant enough that the Ravens are already being discussed as a potential sleeper to make a deep playoff run if the offense operates the way it looks in August.
Derrick Henry and Zay Flowers Are Still the Foundation
While the offensive scheme changes around them, the two players who make the Ravens' offense go remain in place.
Derrick Henry has been one of the best running backs in football since arriving in Baltimore, and he has posted back-to-back 1,500-yard seasons that have redefined what was expected from him at this stage of his career. Henry gives the offense a ground identity that creates everything else -- when he is running at full speed and defenses are loading the box to stop him, the play-action and the intermediate routes open up in ways they simply do not without him. He is the reason Doyle's scheme will work better than it would with a lesser back.
Zay Flowers earned his second consecutive Pro Bowl selection in 2025, and the Ravens picked up his fifth-year option without hesitation. He is the receiver who gives Lamar an answer when nothing else is open -- quick-twitch separation, after-the-catch ability, and the kind of trust that develops between a quarterback and his best playmaker over multiple seasons. Behind him, Mark Andrews remains Lamar's most trusted middle-of-the-field target and the stabilizer in a tight end room that changed fast. The Ravens double-dipped in the draft at both receiver and tight end, adding depth to a group that thinned when Isaiah Likely departed to the New York Giants and Charlie Kolar left for the Chargers.
The loss of Likely is real. He was a legitimate seam threat who gave Lamar a mismatch over the middle for three seasons. But Doyle's H-back scheme is designed to create that same seam stress with a different player type, and Baltimore spent draft capital on Matt Hibner and Josh Cuevas to find the pieces that fit.
Trey Hendrickson Fixes the Pass Rush
If the 2025 Ravens had one glaring structural weakness that the front office acknowledged and addressed this offseason, it was the pass rush.
General manager Eric DeCosta signed Trey Hendrickson to a four-year, $112 million deal to anchor the defensive edge. Hendrickson gives Baltimore something it has not had in years -- a legitimate front-line pass rusher who can win one-on-one reps consistently, generate pressure on early downs, and make offensive coordinators account for him on every snap.
The Ravens' defense under new coordinator Anthony Weaver, paired with Minter's defensive background, is built around the idea that the front four can generate enough pressure without needing to constantly blitz, which puts the coverage behind them in better position. That concept only works if the edge rusher is legitimate. Hendrickson is legitimate.
Calais Campbell is back for his age-40 season and gives the defense a veteran interior presence who brings more than just snaps -- he brings the accountability and communication that young defensive linemen need to develop around. The interior remains a strength even without the production that departed in free agency.
New head coach Jesse Minter brings a defensive background that complements that philosophy. The Ravens' defense was not the problem in 2025 -- the offense's inconsistency and the injuries were -- but a more coordinated approach across both sides of the ball should produce a more complete team than last year's version.
The Offensive Line Is the Swing Factor
The biggest concern entering 2026 is the offensive line, specifically at center.
Tyler Linderbaum, one of the best centers in football, signed a three-year, $81 million deal with the Las Vegas Raiders in free agency. Replacing him is not a small ask. Linderbaum was the communication anchor of the Ravens' interior, and losing that level of play at the most demanding position on the line creates real uncertainty.
John Simpson and Ethan Pocic were added to address the interior depth. First-round guard Vega Ioane projects as an immediate starter and has the athleticism and football instincts to anchor a position for years. The early camp reports on Ioane have been encouraging, with the rookie already earning praise for his readiness.
Whether the center situation stabilizes -- whether Pocic or another option can hold the interior together the way Linderbaum did -- is the most important unanswered question for an offense asking a lot of its quarterback in a new system. Lamar can compensate for many things. A consistently broken interior pocket is harder to overcome.
AFC North and the Path Back
The AFC North is a division worth fighting for in 2026. Pittsburgh has Aaron Rodgers in his final season. Cincinnati has some questions. Cleveland is Cleveland. The Ravens are the most talented team in the division and the team most capable of making a deep postseason run.
The path back to the playoffs runs through staying healthy and executing Doyle's new offense consistently enough to win close games in November. Baltimore's schedule will not be gentle, and the AFC North itself is a gauntlet -- divisional games carry weight that regular wins against softer opponents do not.
But a team with Lamar Jackson at quarterback, Derrick Henry at running back, Trey Hendrickson off the edge, and a new offensive coordinator with genuine creative upside is a team that belongs in the Super Bowl conversation before the season starts. Last year was the anomaly. This year is the correction.
Crystal Ball Prediction
Win total: 12-5. AFC North champions, Super Bowl contender.
The 2025 season was a lesson. Baltimore does not need to learn it twice.
Lamar Jackson is healthy, motivated, and operating in a system that gives him more tools than he has had before. Henry is still running at an elite level. Flowers gives him a security blanket. Hendrickson gives the defense the pass rusher it was missing. And Minter and Doyle give the coaching staff a coherent vision that the previous regime was losing at the end.
Twelve wins is the Ravens returning to their natural level. The AFC is wide open -- Mahomes is working back from surgery, the Bills have a new coach, the Patriots have something to prove. Baltimore has one of the three best quarterbacks in football and a roster that was built to compete for championships.
The chip on this team's shoulder is real. The talent is real. The 2026 Ravens are going to remind everyone why they were considered a Super Bowl contender before a bad injury year got in the way.
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