Like the way Declan answered the question about optional practices. Said if players want to win championships they should be there at every opportunity.
Declan Doyle sets expectations for Ravens’ OTA attendance: ‘We would expect them to be here’
Jonas Shaffer
2/18/2026 2:28 p.m. EST
https://www.thebanner.com/sports/ra...s-7PVZ7KZADVAEBFMHJUWDKDFH2U/#comments-header
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Lamar Jackson is, once again, at the center of the Ravens’ offseason.
His evolution as a quarterback and team leader informed the front office’s search for its next head coach. His contract status will dictate general manager Eric DeCosta’s flexibility in free agency. And his participation in offseason workouts looms over the offense’s rebuild.
Now Jackson has a new coach in Jesse Minter. Over the next month, he’ll likely get a new contract, either through an extension or a salary-cap-friendly restructure. And over the offseason, he’ll have a new offense to learn and lead.
Jackson’s practice plans could be instructive at an inflection point in franchise history. He has not always taken part in organized team activities, exercising his collectively bargained right to skip some offseason workouts before reporting for mandatory minicamp in June. But on Wednesday, first-year offensive coordinator Declan Doyle made clear his expectations for player attendance.
“We would expect them to be here, and certainly it is voluntary,” Doyle said at an introductory news conference, sitting alongside Minter, defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver and special teams coordinator Anthony Levine Sr. “But if you want to say that you’re going to win a championship, if you want to say that you have championship standards and those are your goals and your expectations, certainly, that’s going to take work. That’s going to take collaboration. That’s going to take the beginning of building the relationship with their coaches, other players, starting off this next regime on the right foot.”
Jackson missed the majority of the team’s OTAs in the 2024 and 2025 offseasons, forfeiting a combined $1.5 million in bonuses that were included in the five-year, $260 million deal he signed in 2023. Under the terms of the contract, he must attend 80% of the Ravens’ offseason workouts to earn a bonus each of the next two offseasons.
Other Ravens stars missed OTAs last season, including defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike and safety Kyle Hamilton, but Jackson’s practice habits have come under greater scrutiny since a string of lower-body injuries limited his participation over the second half of last season. He struggled with his accuracy at times, finished with a career-high sack rate (10.7%) and rushed for a career-low 349 yards.
Doyle said the Ravens’ staff is still “in the early stages of really stripping this down to the studs” and rebuilding the offense around their personnel, but he outlined three “nonnegotiable” pillars: physical, detailed and explosive.
Even with the Ravens’ disappointing 2025 season, the team will enter free agency next month as one of the AFC’s Super Bowl favorites. But there’s plenty of heavy lifting ahead. Doyle said he hoped to work with players “hands-on” this offseason and make “improvements so that we set ourselves up where, when we come back in for training camp, we hit the ground running, we already have kind of shared knowledge, shared language, and we’re able to go right to work.”
