Lamar Jackson Skips Ravens OTAs and New Head Coach Jesse Minter Has No Problem Defending His Quarterback
Lamar Jackson did not show up to the Baltimore Ravens’ voluntary OTA on Tuesday. New head coach Jesse Minter did not seem worried about it.
“Lamar’s been one of our leaders of the offseason program, and he had a couple things going on yesterday and today,” Minter told reporters. “I do expect him to be back soon. I know when he’s going to be back, and again, I’ll probably leave those between me and Lamar.”
That is the right way for a first-year head coach to handle a star player’s absence. Not defensive. Not panicked. Not pretending it is a bigger deal than it is.
The history is what makes this almost a non-story. Jackson’s relationship with voluntary offseason work has been complicated for years. He prefers to train on his own. He sometimes shows up. He sometimes does not. He performs at an MVP level either way during the regular season, which is the only argument any quarterback ever needs to win when this conversation comes up.
The new wrinkle is that he is now working with Minter, the former Michigan defensive coordinator and Vikings DC who replaced John Harbaugh after the 2025 season. The Harbaugh-Jackson relationship had become strained over the last two years. The Ravens chose to reset everything by going outside the building. Minter is a young, defensive-minded coach who has no history with Jackson.
That is the actual context for this absence. A new staff. A new system. A quarterback who is famously protective of his own routine. The first voluntary OTA was always going to be a litmus test for the new dynamic.
The fact that Jackson showed up for the first voluntary minicamp earlier this offseason matters. He is engaged. He is not pulling a holdout. He participated when it counted in April. He sat out a single voluntary day in May. That is the spectrum.
Critics will use this as a chance to relitigate every offseason absence Jackson has ever had. They are wrong. The Ravens have won 50 regular-season games with Jackson as the starter over the past four years. He has two MVPs. He just signed his max deal three years ago. The argument that he needs OTAs to be MVP again is not supported by any actual evidence.
Minter knows this. The veteran players in that locker room know this. The Ravens’ offensive coordinator, who comes from the Sean Payton tree, knows this. Nobody inside the building is treating this like a real story except the people whose job is to manufacture stories.
The bigger picture for Baltimore is the schedule. The Ravens open the season with a stretch that includes road games at Kansas City and home games against the Bengals, Bills, and Eagles in the first eight weeks. They need Jackson playing at his best from the moment the lights come on. That happens in late July at training camp, not in a voluntary May practice with cameras pointed at the field.
If Jackson misses mandatory minicamp in June, that becomes a real story. If he holds out of training camp in July, that becomes a major story. A May voluntary practice missed for “a couple things going on” is a non-story that the Ravens just put back to bed.
Minter handled it well. Jackson will be back. The Ravens will be a top-five Super Bowl contender. Wake the rest of us up when there is actual news.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
