Declan Doyle Will Never Be This Mysterious Again. The Ravens Rookie Coordinator Aims To Capitalize On That Sunday

NFL defensive coordinators and advance scouts and personnel analysts will never know less about a Declan Doyle offense than they do right now.

Come Sunday night, when Ravens future opponents begin to pour over the film of the Ravens debut at Indianapolis, with Doyle, their 30-year-old offensive coordinator calling plays for the first time, all of that begins to change. The dynamics start to alter. Months of plans and internal assumptions that Doyle and his staff have made about the 2026 Baltimore Ravens and what they will look like begin to get challenged in a very real way by opposing teams, and how they approach this nascent group.

Doyle will only have one opportunity to be this much of a blank slate, and as he met the media for the final time before embarking on this next chapter of his coaching journey, he certainly seemed to be basking in it and understanding that it won’t be quite this way for much longer.

“Anytime you are a new staff or new play caller, you have the advantage of the element of surprise a little bit,” Doyle said. “We feel like have quite a bit that we haven’t shown.”

Opposing coaches have approached Doyle’s debut the same way we have, studying the offenses of the two men he’s worked closely under – Broncos head coach Sean Payton and Bears head coach Ben Johnson – and determining which of those elements likely appeal to this very young coach the most and fit his personnel.

Which is why we began dissecting Payton’s under center concepts in the run and pass was back in April, which he explained in detail on “The Daily Flock” before camp. Doyle isn’t going to be surprising anyone there – it had to be a staple in the preseason, and it was - and you can’t really hold that back. Adding tempo and changing cadence and relying on more early-down play action passing, is just something that’s coming, and the league knows it.

And Payton and Johnson want to be dedicated to the run game and diverse in their approaches to it, and at this point, Derrick Henry’s age (32) and Lamar Jackson’s limited rushing in recent years might not really matter, because people I talk to around the league believe the ground game will be in heavy emphasis early as this passing game evolves with a brand new offensive line and so many rookie pass catchers. Doyle knows that’s what his opponents are doing, and he’s being a little cagey himself, as you would expect.

“There are parts of everything that you bring to it,” Doyle said of his mentors and past offensive staffs. He volunteered that he’s pulling in things from his staff and their previous work and influences but wants teams guessing as to what that constitutes. And more than anything else, he was hired to work with a two-time MVP quarterback in Lamar Jackson, who is entering the last guaranteed year of his contract – to create something that is truly their own.

“This offense is the 2026 Baltimore Raves offense, that’s what it is,” Doyle proclaimed. “It’s not anything from the past.”

Go Time

What Doyle doesn’t have is much of a honeymoon phase. This team’s timeline isn’t built for that.

Owner Steve Bisciotti fired John Harbaugh because he believed his personnel department – despite years of blunders in the draft and free agency and ridiculous in-season moves like the Jaire Alexander trade – had the goods, and Harbaugh’s staff wasn’t bringing out the best in the talent. The organization makes it clear they believe they can compete for the Super Bowl most every year – no three-year plans and building for the future here.

The fact Doyle has so many rookies in key roles and a starting center with 11 career reps and a totally new interior offensive line that has never played together before, well, that’s just part of the gig. This doesn’t have to look like the peaks the Ravens offense achieved in 2024, but it can’t be beset by procedural issues and penalties and mistakes, either. Some growing pains may be inevitable, but a game here or there has cost this franchise desperately in terms of homefield advantage or playoff seed, and slow starts have crippled some recent seasons.

“You can’t really think about it that way,” Doyle said of growing pains. Teams change every year on both sides of the ball, it’s a league of parity where roughly six new teams make the playoffs each year, and heading into Week 1 can feel like the ultimate crap shoot.

“Coach Payton used to talk about, ‘This a blind race,” Doyle explained. “You don’t really know where anybody else is … The first snapshot of where you’re at is in that first game.”

It Takes A Village

Doyle said he is pulling from his entire staff in preparation for his debut and is taking in as much from his players as possible too, especially Jackson. He doesn’t want to overwhelm the roster with more than makes sense, and needs to sort through what truly plays to the strengths of each key individual in this offense.

Each practice is an opportunity to fine tune what looks good for Sunday and what needs more work. “That practices are really like auditions,” Doyle said, and it’s imperative that each day Jackson is comfortable with the install. Other coaches from the Payton family tree, including Ravens assistant Joe Lombardi, have failed mightily to meet that challenge.

On a daily basis that includes Doyle meeting with the quarterbacks first, he said, then an install meeting with the full offense, one walk through for them, another walk through with the defense present, then repping plays in practice. After that, it’s meeting with Jackson to sort through what he likes and what to chuck and what to refine.

“It takes as long as it takes,” Doyle said of those sessions. His goal is to have Jackson as comfortable with the upcoming assignment as possible, and in a few days there will be actual game film of this all to finally sort through and another layer to the process to unfold.

“You never want to call a play that he doesn’t feel great about,” Doyle said.

The first impression Sunday won’t determine anything. It’s too small a sample to draw too much from. And there will be rough patches. But it’s far better to make a strong debut, than to come out struggling, and after Sunday it will becoming increasingly difficult to shock the best defensive minds in football.

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