OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Everyone gets a turn in front of the Baltimore Ravens’ defense. That’s how it works, with each defensive assistant delivering an aspect of the weekly game plan to the team. It promotes accountability within the staff and helps young coaches find their voice.
Zach Orr didn’t need any help with the latter. Former Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald learned that quickly. As he watched Orr address players early last season, the voice of the inside linebackers coach rising with intensity, Macdonald made a decision.
“Zach was unique in the fact that it was like, ‘I need to get this guy in front of our defense as many times as possible,’” said Macdonald, Baltimore’s defensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023. “He just set the tone. It was so real and so passionate and authentic. I’m more of a steady presence. I felt like the guys needed to get hit between the eyes a few times, and Zach is so good at that.”
When Macdonald was hired as the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach in January, he wanted to bring Orr with him. He views Orr as an up-and-coming star and a future head coach. Whether the Green Bay Packers offered Orr their defensive coordinator job depends on whom you believe, but they at least interviewed him for their vacancy.
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Orr was humbled by the interest, and there was maybe a day or two following Baltimore’s AFC championship loss to the Kansas City Chiefs where he wondered if he’d still be with the Ravens when the next football season kicked off. Orr looks back on that uncertainty from six months ago, and it only reinforces his belief that he’s exactly where he should be.
At 32, Orr is the second-youngest defensive coordinator in football. Ravens coach John Harbaugh tabbed him to replace Macdonald, culminating in a rapid coaching ascent following the premature and gut-wrenching end of Orr’s playing career with Baltimore in 2017.
“It’s definitely more special for it to happen here, just knowing — and trying to uphold — the standard,” Orr said in a recent interview. “I’m a defensive guy and this organization is built on defense. I was a linebacker. And a linebacker, Ray Lewis, was the face of this franchise. The other thing is, this organization had my back with everything I’ve been through. It’s only right. I’m trying to pay that back and I believe the only way to do that is to help this team get another championship.”
That Orr’s regular-season defensive coordinator debut comes Thursday night against the reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs, pitting him against Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, one of the most prolific head coach-quarterback duos the game has ever seen, is a fitting continuation of Orr’s young football life. Nothing has ever come easy.
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He was lightly recruited despite playing at Texas prep powerhouse, DeSoto High School. He went undrafted in 2014 after garnering All-Conference USA honors in two different seasons. He was given little chance to make the Ravens’ roster as a college free agent in 2014 and yet, he earned a core special teams role and ultimately became a starting inside linebacker alongside C.J. Mosley. Just as he was on the doorstep of a life-changing contract following a second-team All-Pro season in 2016, Orr learned that his career was over because of a congenital spine condition.
His coaching career hasn’t been linear, either. Orr was an assistant with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021, when their season descended into chaos under Urban Meyer, leaving Orr and other staffers wondering where their next coaching job would be. Orr found his way back to Baltimore, and he’s now directing the defense for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.
“When the odds stack against him, he thrives,” said Tennessee Titans assistant special teams coach Anthony Levine Sr., a former Ravens player and coach and a mentor to Orr. “It’s not that he wants to prove others wrong. It’s more that he’s going to prove himself right. That’s just him. He’s not stopping.”
If you watched a Ravens training camp practice this summer from afar, it was a challenge to distinguish Orr from the players. He’s certainly leaner than he was in his playing days, but the level of energy and emotion that he displays between the lines hasn’t changed. He jogged from drill to drill, celebrated big defensive plays with shoulder pad slaps and chest bumps, and exhorted the players around him. Orr looked completely in his element and unfazed by the increased pressure and responsibilities his new role brings.
There was a time, though, when just being on the field so close to the action gave him a palpable sense of loss and regret. When he announced his retirement in January 2017 — Orr considered a comeback four months later but couldn’t get the clearance from team doctors — he acknowledged that he didn’t have a good feel for what came next. He figured he’d stay around the game in some capacity. It was unavoidable in the Orr family.
The family patriarch, Terry Orr, won two Super Bowls as a tight end for Washington during the 1987 and 1991 seasons. His oldest of four sons, Terrance II, is a high school coach. Nick Orr played at TCU and had a brief stint with the Chicago Bears. The youngest of the Orr boys, Chris, played a season for the Carolina Panthers. He’s now a college coach.
“I’m not going to lie. It’s all we do: talk football,” Terrance II said. “And (if) it’s not football, we’ll talk about LeBron (James).”
Zach Orr never envisioned a life in coaching, but he didn’t think his playing career would be over at the age of 24, either. In a medical exam to get a better look at herniated disks that he sustained late in the 2016 season, doctors discovered that Orr was born with a rare condition where his C-1 vertebrae wasn’t fully formed. Continuing to play would have put him at risk of a major injury or even death. Orr was left without a choice.
“I don’t think people realized how young he was,” Terrance II said. “When he was forced to retire, he was at his physical prime. When he finally made All-Pro, it was the same day he found out he had to retire. He left the doctor and then he got into the car and he got the message about being an All-Pro. It was really a high and a low in a 10-minute span. It was hard for him. He hadn’t accomplished what he wanted to do in the game yet.”
Zach Orr was named a second-team All-Pro linebacker in the final season of his playing career with the Ravens. (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
Orr was offered a defensive analyst position by Harbaugh ahead of the 2017 season. Just as he did as a player, Orr put everything into the support role. However, his enthusiasm masked a mental struggle that he battled every day in his first year as a coach.
“The first year was pretty tough,” said Orr, who had 133 tackles, three interceptions, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries in his final NFL season. “I think it was because the team was still the team that I was a part of as a player. I had just been in the locker room with those guys. Sixty-five, 70 percent of them, probably higher, were my teammates just months ago. Being on the sideline, knowing that in my mind that I can still help these guys, but I couldn’t go out there, that was pretty tough. By that second training camp, in 2018, I started to turn the page. I just needed time to process it all.”
Orr has a tattoo on his lower left leg that reads: Hard work pays off. He carries the same mindset he had as a player into coaching, and he’s not afraid to assert himself.
“You are who you are. It’s not like you go from being a player to being a coach and you completely change. You have that same mentality,” Levine said. “Zach had that Ravens mentality from the beginning. The type of player that he was, that’s the type of coach he is. He’s competitive, he’s smart, he’s aggressive, he’s physical. Even when I was still playing and he first started coaching, he used to charge me up. It was like, ‘Hold on, Zach. First of all, I’m older than you. Second of all, you were my rookie (mentee).’ But to him, it was like, ‘Man, this is my role now.’”
In 2020, Orr finished his fourth season as a coach when an opportunity arose to join Meyer’s nascent staff in Jacksonville. Don “Wink” Martindale, the Ravens’ defensive coordinator at the time, urged his former player to take the job. Martindale’s reasoning was that the new job would help Orr grow as a coach. It would also help him further distance himself from the unfortunate end of his playing career. In Baltimore, he was the former player who went into coaching. In Jacksonville, he was just a coach.
“I think he needed that for his development,” Martindale said.
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The season was a disaster for the Jaguars. They won just three games and Meyer was fired in mid-December. However, it proved beneficial for Orr. For one, he was coaching the outside linebackers in tandem with the defensive line, so it gave him a better understanding of other positions on defense. And two, he learned to coach through adversity.
“Being there that season, you kind of had to find different ways to motivate guys and get guys going,” Orr said. “And facing so much adversity, you’ve got to find ways to motivate yourself as well. I just think the experience made me a better person and a better coach as well.”
When Macdonald returned to Baltimore in 2022 to succeed Martindale after one year at Michigan, he made sure Orr returned, too, to coach the inside linebackers. Seeing Orr’s potential as a coach, Macdonald was determined to get him as involved as possible in the game-planning process. They watched film and worked on game plans together. Macdonald estimated that Baltimore’s defense, which was arguably the best unit in the league last year, used 80 to 90 percent of Orr’s ideas in the high red zone.
“This is Year 10 for him in the building,” Macdonald said. “So really, if you look at it through that lens, he’s kind of more qualified than I was in terms of years. In terms of just knowing the culture, knowing the expectations, he’s a Raven through and through. Schematically and X’s and O’s, yeah, it’s important to a certain extent, but how do you get the message to resonate with the guys? How do you get them to play together? How do you get them to play a certain way and cohesively? That’s what’s important.
“How you lead the room, how you connect with the players, that’s Zach’s superpower.”
Orr prepared for this opportunity in his own way, too. He’d watch past Ravens games and pretend he was the defensive coordinator, making the defensive calls before each play. When he called his first game in the preseason, Orr said he felt nervous, not anxious. Nobody expects Orr to make massive changes with the defense, but he’s vowed to put his imprint on it.
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With so much to do and the prospect of having to contain Mahomes never far from his mind, Orr hasn’t had a whole lot of time to reflect on the whirlwind of training camp or even the past seven years. However, Orr, a picture of positivity with an omnipresent smile on his face, acknowledged that he would have never imagined this, nor probably would those closest to him, who remember the uncertainty he felt when his playing career ended.
“It was definitely a turning point in his life,” Nick Orr said. “He showed a lot of strength and determination to keep pushing forward. He looked deep inside of himself and it paid off for him.”
Terrance II and other family members were in the car with Orr leaving M&T Bank Stadium in January following the AFC Championship Game when Orr spotted Macdonald. The two men, still coming to grips with one of the most disappointing losses of their young careers, shared an embrace and encouraging words.
Both of their professional lives would change dramatically within a matter of days.
“We knew it was going to happen in the future. We just didn’t know it was going to happen this fast,” Terrance II said. “It was a dream come true. Being the defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens means something, but the job is not finished.”
(Top photo: Terrance Williams / Associated Press)
