Music City Miracles
Jesse Minter is the current defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers and was known as the second-hottest coaching candidate for first-timers, at least at the beginning of the season, behind Joe Brady. While his star has fallen in the eyes of fans because of his injured defense, he still has an innovative scheme with great potential. With a lot of the guys on this list, I’ve been very familiar with them. Robert Saleh has been my favorite candidate since late October, Chris Shula was a hot name after he forced Darnold into four picks, and Klint Kubiak was a dude I got in on the hype on early with. Jesse Minter, though, is a guy I was not as familiar with. I’d heard the name, sure, and I knew that he had the Mike MacDonald defense, but nothing past that. So, this was one I was looking forward to and was interested to see how his profile stacked up compared to all the other candidates. So, without any further delays, here is the head coaching profile of Jesse Minter.
Jesse Minter got his first coaching gig all the way back in the year 2006 as a defensive intern for the (not robbed of the CFP) Notre Dame Fighting Irish. After a year doing that, he went on to be a grad assistant for 2 years (2007-2008) at the University of Cincinnati, and after this, he finally got his first job as a position coach. In 2009, Minter took the job at Indiana State to be their linebackers coach and stayed at that position for a year before being promoted to defensive coordinator. He did well enough for the two years he was there to the point where Georgia State’s staff decided to give him a chance at the defensive coordinator position. He had a couple of years there where, for Georgia State, his defenses were pretty decent (2013-2016). After his time at Georgia State, he finally got the call up to the NFL and gained his connection to the Harbaugh family as he got a position on the Baltimore Ravens staff as a defensive assistant. After two years at that position, the Ravens promoted Minter to Assistant Defensive Backs coach, and after one year, he was promoted to the main Defensive Backs coach. After spending the pandemic year at that position, Clark Lea called him to come be the Defensive Coordinator for the Vanderbilt Commodores. His defense wasn’t at all good at Vanderbilt, but in year one of Clark Lea, the whole team was overall terrible, so it’s hard to blame that on him. After that miserable year, though, Minter was rewarded. Jim Harbaugh took Minter away from Vanderbilt, and he officially became the Defensive Coordinator for the Michigan Wolverines. He crushed it there for two years, thanks to his innovative defense, and won a National Championship in his last year there. After that last year at Michigan, as Jim Harbaugh left for the NFL,...
