Inside the Not-So-Young Mind of Declan Doyle

Stepping Onto the High Dive

After the Vikings’ relentless blitz gave the Ravens troubles in two joint practices last week, Doyle went to every position room at the team hotel during meetings, making sure players knew what they were supposed to do on specific pressure looks.

“Having an offensive coordinator that can really kind of personalize everything that you are doing and really give you a clear objective of what you need to do is awesome,” said rookie tight end Josh Cuevas, who had a team-high 46 receiving yards in the Ravens’ second preseason game.

Doyle is working harder than ever. He said he tries to leave work at work but realized it’s impossible. He wakes up in the wee hours, mind racing.

“My text message thread to myself is just massive — solving the day’s problems at 3 in the morning, every day,” he said with a chuckle. “I think that’s what you sign up for.”

You’d never know Doyle missed so much sleep. He doesn’t have bags under his eyes. His hair is perfectly combed and beard trimmed. He looks and talks like a 30-year-old. Flowers joked that sometimes, he has to tell Doyle to talk slower. But don’t let appearances fool you.

“I’m 30, but this is the eighth year in the NFL of being around high-level football thinking, high-level coaching. I don’t feel like I’m young in any way,” Doyle said.

“I’m young in the fact that I haven’t called a lot of plays, but I don’t feel like a young person. I feel like I’ve lived a lot of life in that amount of time. I’ve been around a lot of different guys, different types of guys, and I’ll be a much better coach 10 years from now than I am right now, just like I’m a lot better right now than I was five years ago.”

Less than a month from calling plays in his first regular-season game, Doyle said it feels like he’s stepping onto the high dive. He was the “guy behind the guy before,” but now it’s his offense.

Doyle planned to call one preseason game from the booth and another from the sideline, but he felt so comfortable in the first preseason game calling the shots from upstairs that he remained up there for the second preseason game and will do so in the regular season.

“There are a lot of aspects of that are very different than being the non-play-caller, but I feel very ready to do it,” Doyle said.

“Now, it’s about going out and doing it at a high level and doing it well and being able to produce. I very much recognize the weight of the position and it’s not something I take lightly at all. Every day, I’m hunting to outperform that. I want to have a standard that’s much higher than anybody else’s standard for me.”

Young offensive minds have skyrocketed up the NFL’s coaching ranks over the past decade. Sean McVay was hired as the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach at 30 years old. There’s a reason why Peyton, at the NFL Combine this year, said Doyle will be a head coach “quicker than Baltimore wants.“

But as he prepares for his first season in Baltimore, Doyle is saying the same thing he did when he got his first NFL job in New Orleans. This is as good as it gets.

“I could win the lottery, and I would show back up to work tomorrow,” he said, “and be like, ‘Let’s keep going.'”

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