Jesse Minter is Where Arkansas Pride Overlaps with Incestuous Nature of Harbaughs’ M.O. 

That lasted two seasons before John Harbaugh’s ouster on January 6 led to Minter returning to Baltimore in the last few days.

While it’s normal — common even — for a former assistant to take over a team where he once coached, this ping ponging assistants back and forth between head coaches isn’t. However, between the Harbaughs, it’s business as usual. Coaches trees in any sport almost always come across as incestous to a degree, but the interlinking goes up a tick when actual brothers share the same profession. 

Minter represents just one of many professional ties between the Harbaughs. For instance, the Chargers current offensive coordinator Greg Roman has had a career similar to Minter. Roman’s first time working under a Harbaugh was with Jim at San Francisco in the same role he holds now in LA. The Atlantic City, N.J., native helped lead the 49ers to the 2013 Super Bowl against John Harbaugh’s Ravens in the first time brothers had ever faced off in the championship match.

Four years later, Roman joined John Harbaugh as an offensive analyst and was promoted to OC in 2019, staying with the Ravens until 2022. In 2024, Jim completed the circle, picking up the 25-year vet at the time.

Here are a few other assistant coaches bounced around between the Harbaughs:

• Mike Macdonald
• Andy Bischoff
• Mike Devlin
• Marc Trestman

They’ve also shared quite a few players with the most recent being an October trade that included Ravens edge rusher Odafe Oweh for Chargers safety Alohi Gilman. Even when Jim was at Michigan, he sent his brother four former Wolverines via the draft.

Now, it’s on Minter to finish what John Harbaugh started. 

While Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson flourished as a two-time NFL MVP, Harbaugh could never quite build off of his 2013 Super Bowl win or put together anything close to the kind of defense that brought Baltimore home its first title in 2001.

So, at last, a turning of the page. “Baltimore got its guy, and he’s a defensive guru,” Ravens Wire contributor Geoffrey A. Knox wrote. “Cue the throwback days to elite defense. That’s something that Ravens fans have waited to hear for quite some time.” 

The front office seems hopeful, too. More details about his contract are forthcoming, but Baltimore reportedly committed to Minter for the long-haul, signing him to a five-year deal. In college, initial five-year deals are the norm, like Arkansas’ with Ryan Silverfield. However, in the NFL, they’re more rare but are slowly gaining popularity. 

John Harbaugh, too, has inked his own new five-year deal, to the tune of $100 million with the New York Giants.

His charge: revive a once proud franchise that’s fallen on hard times. To do that, the Giants will need to get back to their championship DNA. That’s something former Razorback Jim Lee Howell knew well, since he played a big hand in fostering it.

Arkansas Natives in the NFL

In recent years, Pro Hogs like Mitch Petrus and Robert Thomas have suited up for the Giants. But you have to go back to the middle of the 1900s to find the two most accomplished former Razorback Giants of all time: Pat Summerall and his coach, Jim Lee Howell. 

A Lonoke, Ark., native, Howell played football and basketball for Razorback between 1933 and 1937, where he received All-Southwest Conference honors in both sports. After graduating, he went on to play end for the Giants. When he finished playing in 1947, he started coaching for Wagner College until 1953 when he made the jump to the pros.

In the 1950s, Howell’s Giants played in 3 NFL championship games with a staff that would have made Frank Broyles himself blush. 

One one side of the ball was Vince Lombardi; the same Lombardi after whom the Super Bowl Trophy is named. On the defensive side of the ball was Tom Landry, who would become the winningest head coach in Dallas Cowboy history. Both are NFL Hall of Famers.

That tradition started by Landry in Dallas then paved the way for a couple more men held dear by the Natural State:  Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Both men, so integral to Arkansas’ 1964 national championship, would win national titles as college head coaches and Super Bowls leading the Dallas Cowboys.

Johnson and Switzer are one of the only three coaches to reach the summit in college and the NFL. The other, Pete Carroll, also got his start as a Razorback. 

In 1977, Arkansas defensive coordinator hired Carroll away from Pacific University to help coach his secondary. Carroll left after one year as a graduate assistant, but Kiffin got another promising GA for the following year — a Henderson State graduate named Rick Minter.

Rick, Jesse Minter’s father, followed Kiffin to North Carolina State when he landed his first head coaching position, which helped launch both of their historic careers. Now, 46 years later, their sons are emerging as leaders of their own era.

No doubt being in close proximity to some of the best coaches to ever do it helped prepare Lane and Jesse for their careers. Sometimes, keeping it within the family ends up being the best way to do it. 

Take the elder Minter now, for example. Currently, he’s back in the NFL for the first time since 2015 as a defensive analyst for – you guessed it – the Los Angeles Chargers. 

*A Fort Smith Christian product although born in Texas.

***

The greatest Pro Hog broadcaster interviews the NFL commissioner after Lombardi’s Packers won the first Super Bowl:

***

More coverage of Arkansas football from BoAS…