Marlon Humphrey wasn’t around Owings Mills much in the offseason and hasn’t been heard from much since the Ravens made a coaching change.
The veteran cornerback, being paid $19.25M this season despite declining play in recent years and fairly brutal 2025, clearly had a lot on his mind this weekend when he met the media for the first time in a long time. And much of it seemed pointed at the former coaching staff, frankly.
Not a ton was uttered directly in regard to his own highly disappointing campaign. He did wink at his struggles in this training camp, saying rookie head coach Jesse Minter has called out his “trash” play at times and sort of nodded at the idea that at some point a shift to safety makes sense. But not now given that Humphrey maintains he still has the speed and twitch for corner. We’ll see.
Up until the usual injuries took hold the last 48 hours – thinning out some of the young corners showing well at least at practice – this appeared to be a secondary as deep and talented as the ones from prior great Ravens defenses, leaving Humphrey to have to show his stuff. One would think Nate Wiggins and Chidobe Awuzie would be on the boundary and Humphrey the top nickel back, and with Humphrey talking about staying healthy being a goal, perhaps his snaps need to be harnessed, regardless.
Minter clearly didn’t love the film he watched of this group from the past few years, nor should he. He won’t tolerate the kind of individual and collective mistakes that led to a team becoming notorious for blowing big fourth-quarter leads. Humphrey played no small role in that, and it’s being discussed, not shied away from.
“He’s very honest,”; Humphrey said, “and he has told me ‘I’m trash,’ and I appreciate that. If I’m trash, I’m trash. I just appreciate his honesty … Even though they’re our coaches, we’re all just grown men. And you know when a man is lying to you and know when he’s telling the trust.”
Alrighty then.
The reality for Humphrey last season, no matter how you try to couch it, is he was one of the most picked-on starting corners in the NFL HYPER – he ranked 70th or lower in many key metrics among regular starting corners. A pathetic pass rush had something to do with that and injuries, too – HYPER, for sure, but I suspect he gets targeted quite a bit this year too until or unless he sends strong signals that last year was something of an anomaly.
“Didn’t meet it,” Humphrey said of his standard of play last year, “and obviously teamwise, I didn’t meet it.”
That’s an understatement.
He was the fourth-most thrown on corner in the NFL (Nate Wiggins was third!), targeted 101 times. Of the 75 NFL defenders targeted at least 65 times last season, Humphrey ranked:
Passing Yards Allowed: 909 / 75th of 75
Yards/Att: 9.0 / 74th of 75
Yards/Completion: 13.6 / 70th of 75
Completions of 20 yards or more: 13 / T 74th of 75
Passing First Downs Allowed: 37 / 73rd of 75
It seemed like Humphrey, 30, needed some time to get his head around the fact that Minter, once a low-level defensive assistant who used to sit in their meeting rooms (“I don’t know what his exact title was,” as he recalled) is now running the Baltimore Ravens with John Harbaugh out after nearly 20 years on the job. And it also seems like he’s quite happy for the change and excited by it and appreciates that Minter’s’ expertise runs far deeper than former defensive coordinator Zach Orr.
Each time Humphrey heaped praise on something this new coaching group was doing it was hard not to take it as dishing on the prior one (“It kind of sounds like I’m trashing last year,” Humphrey acknowledged at one point). And it sounds like new voices making new critiques was in order.
Minter is administering some tough love trying to correct some horrible coverage issues that led to Baltimore giving up more explosive plays than any defense in the NFL last year (Minter’s defense with the Chargers the last two years was elite in that regard).
A few days ago, Humphrey said Minter took aim at the entre secondary. Humphrey offered some thoughts in the open exchange of ideas as well, about whether they were competing to their standard and pushing enough. They also know Minter has a proven scheme, unlike Orr.
“There will be drama, there will be stuff that happens,” Humphrey noted. “How quickly does he address that? … It can trickle down into the season.”
Humphrey said Minter did not shy away from calling out “old scars,” from poor coverage from last year that was propping back up and “he addressed it, and it was over … He addresses something immediately and very effectively.”
Humphrey has baan candid himself about how terrible thise defense has been for much of the last two years, which might have refined his ability to stomach it from others.
Minter doesn’t have years of baggage or turmoil with this roster, or shared embarrassment or shame for how seasons ended. The freshness probably helps keep things from feeling too personal. But this group will develop their own warts and callouses. And unlike with Harbaugh’s staffs, I wouldn’t be shocked if Humphrey’s role changed drastically if he continues on last year’s path. Or anything close. Old sacred cows are probably gone, too.
He’s in a contract year as the dean of this secondary, and it’s baffling to many NFL personnel executives how much he’s being paid. As great as Minter is, and for as robust as these exchanges of ideas with Humphrey must be, using him the same way he was a year ago is probably asking for similar results.
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