New defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver sat Green down this offseason and walked him through a film cut-up designed to show just how close he came to a far bigger statistical season. Green, who led college football with 17 sacks at Marshall in 2024, had been grappling with the gap between that production and his 3.5-sack rookie campaign.
“I think that cut-up showed me a lot about myself,” Green said, according to the team’s official site. “Even though I feel like I didn’t necessarily meet the standard that I wanted to meet last year, I came very close.”
Weaver put it more bluntly. “It’s not an ability thing,” he said. “He is milliseconds away from having double-digit sacks, and we are going to do everything we can to try to make that happen this year.”
That framing matters because of who’s saying it. Weaver spent the previous two seasons as Miami’s defensive coordinator and said Green was one of the Dolphins’ top two outside linebacker prospects on their own draft board before Baltimore took him in the second round. He’s not a stranger evaluating Green from the outside. He’s a coach who wanted this player on his own roster a year ago and is now finally getting the chance to coach him.
A scheme change built for aggression, not containment
Green’s own explanation for last season’s shortfall centers on scheme, not talent. He said the pass-rush approach under Baltimore’s previous coaching staff didn’t put edge rushers in position to simply attack.
“It’s a little bit more attacking rather than containing,” Green said of the new system under head coach Jesse Minter, per BaltimoreRavens.com. “I feel like a lot last year was a little bit more containing, a little bit more conservative. But I think now, it’s like, ‘Go you attack the quarterback, do your best moves.'”
Minter arrived in Baltimore this year as the franchise’s new head coach after two seasons running the Los Angeles Chargers defense, where he’ll continue calling plays himself even with Weaver aboard as coordinator. There’s already a data point suggesting what his scheme can unlock in an edge rusher: Odafe Oweh had zero sacks in his first five games under Minter’s predecessor in Baltimore, then posted 7.5 sacks in 12 games once Minter took over play-calling duties elsewhere. Green is hoping for a similar jump.
The Ravens’ collective pass-rush numbers back up why urgency was necessary. Baltimore finished with just 30 sacks in 2025, tied for third-fewest in the league, according to the team’s own reporting. That’s the backdrop against which every offseason addition on the defensive front has to be judged.
Hendrickson and Young change the math around him
Green won’t be doing any of this alone. Baltimore signed Trey Hendrickson, who brings 81 career sacks and back-to-back 17.5-sack seasons from 2023 and 2024, on a four-year deal worth up to $120 million with sack incentives. Hendrickson, 31, is coming off core muscle surgery that ended his 2025 season after seven games, but he’s expected to be fully healthy for training camp.
Green has already started leaning on him. “I’m also extremely grateful to have Trey, you know, for selfish reasons, because when they try to slide to his side and chip and double team and do all that stuff to him, it’s going to take a little bit more stress off me,” Green said.
Second-round rookie Zion Young adds another layer. Young profiles as a strong run-defender first, which is notably not Green’s strength, and that separation of labor could be the mechanism that frees Green to focus almost exclusively on rushing the passer. Ebony Bird has laid out the case that Young taking on more of the run-stopping workload could push Green into more of a designated pass-rush role, which would play to his actual strengths rather than asking him to be an every-down defender he isn’t yet built to be.
Put together, Baltimore’s offseason additions to the defensive front amount to a serious talent influx around a still-developing Green, and outside voices have started to notice. Ebony Bird described the transformation of the pass rush as one of the clearer wins of the Ravens’ offseason, pointing to the combined 198 career sacks Hendrickson and defensive lineman Calais Campbell bring to a unit that managed just 30 as a team in 2025.
National analysts are buying in too
The belief in Green isn’t confined to Baltimore’s own building. NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks placed Green on his 2026 All-Breakout Team defense, pairing him alongside New York Giants edge rusher Abdul Carter as one of 11 players he expects to take a significant step forward this season.
“Jesse Minter’s return to Baltimore — and Trey Hendrickson’s arrival in Charm City — should lead to a monstrous season for the second-year pro,” Brooks wrote. “He gets a chance to showcase his skills in an attack-style scheme that will force opponents to deal with the ultra-feisty Hendrickson on one side, leading to plenty of isolated matchups for the 6-foot-3, 250-pounder.”
Brooks went further with the numbers, projecting that Green “could notch 10-plus sacks as a designated pass rusher” after tallying 3.5 sacks, 14 quarterback hits and 41 total tackles as a rookie, per NFL.com.
What the numbers say — and what they don’t yet
Green’s rookie stat line looks unremarkable on its face, but the underlying numbers tell a more complicated story about a player who was on the field constantly without translating that snap count into sacks.
| Category | Mike Green, 2025 Rookie Season |
|---|---|
| Games played | 17 (1 start) |
| Sacks | 3.5 |
| Total tackles | 41 (17 solo) |
| Quarterback hits | 14 |
| Fumble recoveries | 1 |
Fourteen quarterback hits against just 3.5 sacks is the number the Ravens keep pointing back to. It suggests Green was consistently affecting the pocket without cashing in, which lines up with Weaver’s “milliseconds away” framing rather than reading as empty pressure with no real disruption behind it.
It’s also worth noting that Green enters this season with a new jersey number, switching from No. 45 to No. 15 ahead of voluntary veteran minicamp in April, a small but visible marker of a player trying to signal a fresh chapter after a rookie year that didn’t match his college production.
The bigger picture for Baltimore’s defense
None of this happens in a vacuum. The Ravens’ defensive turnaround hinges on more than one player, and Green’s development is just one piece of a broader effort that includes an improved secondary and a healthier interior line led by Nnamdi Madubuike and Calais Campbell. A defense that can generate pressure with four rushers gives Weaver and Minter more flexibility to disguise coverages behind it, which is part of why Minter specifically pursued a proven closer like Hendrickson rather than relying purely on scheme pressure.
There’s also a track record worth weighing carefully before assuming anything is guaranteed. Green fell to the second round of the 2025 draft in part because of off-field allegations that predated his time at Marshall, a fact that was part of the broader pre-draft evaluation of him and worth acknowledging plainly rather than glossing over.
On the field, though, the pieces genuinely have been assembled around him. A pass-rush partner who commands double teams. A rookie built to soak up run-down snaps. A coordinator who has already shown he can unlock production from Baltimore’s outside linebackers. Whether Green turns “milliseconds away” into a double-digit sack season will be one of the more interesting storylines to track once the Ravens open training camp on July 24.
