09-01-2024 NFL Preview - Flipbook - Page 2
NFL ’24
Sunday, September 1, 2024 2
RAVENS
For love of the game
After a sudden and
devastating end to his
playing career, former
linebacker Zach Orr
turned to coaching
coach. It’s just going to happen. He’s that
special of a guy.”
Players cheered Orr’s promotion, noting
his gift for bonding with each of them and
the aggressive spirit he’ll preach in keeping with the franchise’s vaunted defensive
tradition.
“As a rookie, coming in every day, you
don’t know what to expect, and [Zach]
was always that guy that was a little touchpoint for me; like, ‘Hey, I’ve been through
it. I know what’s going on,'” All-Pro safety
Kyle Hamilton said. “It’s cool to see both
of us have grown these past couple years.
Probably nobody here was even thinking of
him as a [defensive coordinator] two years
ago, and now look at him.”
By Childs Walker
T
errance Orr II worried over
his younger brother’s state
of mind. Zach Orr had been
at the height of his powers
as a Ravens linebacker when a doctor
told him the devastating news: His
spine was a ticking time bomb because
of a rare congenital abnormality. There
he was on their parents’ couch in
DeSoto, Texas — 24 years old, strong,
fast and smart as he had ever been, but
all he could do was sit and watch old
highlights, thinking about what was
supposed to be. Terrance II reacted to
this dismaying sight like the football
coach he is.
“I just told him, ‘Look, man, you can’t
physically play, but the love is still there,‘”
he recalled. “So I said, ‘Why not go into
coaching and have the same output and
input you did on the field, but just do it at a
different level?’ ”
It was the type of “what’s next” message
the four Orr brothers — Zach is the second
oldest — had heard again and again from
the exacting, caring coaches who’d helped
them transcend physical limitations to play
college and professional football. Though
From a football family
Zach Orr is in charge of the Ravens’ defense at age 32. That’s no surprise to those who
helped him turn the end of one dream into the beginning of another. KIM HAIRSTON/STAFF
their father, Terry, had played tight end in
the NFL, they always saw themselves as
underdogs who needed to prepare harder
and smarter than the blue-chip prospects
(future All-Pro Von Miller was one DeSoto
contemporary) around them.
Why couldn’t Zach Orr, who has a tattoo
that reads “Hard Work Pays Off” on his
left leg, apply that same mentality to the
unwanted transition in front of him?
It has been seven years now since those
gloomy days on the couch, and Orr is, at
age 32, the Ravens’ new defensive coordinator, a coaching prodigy already touted
as a candidate to run his own team in the
not-distant future. He will enter this season
as the subject of intense scrutiny because
he’s stepping in for his friend and mentor
Mike Macdonald, who transformed the
team’s defense into the NFL’s best and most
innovative.
A vocal contingent of fans thought so
highly of Macdonald that they wanted
him to succeed John Harbaugh after the
Ravens’ loss in the AFC championship
game. Instead, he left to coach the Seattle
Seahawks and tried to take Orr with him.
Orr opted to stay and put his own imprint
on the defense he helped Macdonald build.
“Zach’s going to do an awesome job,”
Macdonald said. “What I would say is,
‘Trust your vision for how you want it to
be.’ And the thing I know about Zach is he’s
going to pursue that relentlessly until it’s
the way he envisions it. That’s the jump.”
Macdonald doesn’t believe Orr’s climb
will stop with running one of the league’s
top defenses: “He’s going to be a head
The speed of Orr’s ascent was improbable — many of his contemporaries are still
playing — but the seeds were apparent to
those who watched him climb that first
mountain to become a starting NFL linebacker.
Terry Orr did not push his boys to follow
in his footsteps. In fact, he stopped watching the NFL altogether after his career as a
tight end concluded in 1993, in part because
he broke four bones in his back. When he
coached Zach’s youth team in Virginia, he
declined to participate in the preseason
draft, content to take his son and all the kids
no one else wanted. Just have the most fun,
he told them, even as Zach bristled at the
team’s winless record.
Terry would have felt just fine if his boys
never played past that level. But he moved
the family back to Texas, where football
was as essential as air, water and daily
prayers. A visiting family friend once asked
Terry why there were so many hulking
college stadiums in his community. “Those
Turn to Orr, Page 3
“I just told him, ‘Look man, you can’t physically play, but the love is still there. So I said, ‘Why not go into
coaching and have the same output and input you did on the field, but just do it at a different level?’”
— Terrance Orr II, on his brother Zach
