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Tee Martin dared to think it would happen for him.

After serving as Lamar Jackson’s position coach during the quarterback’s best passing season, he thought perhaps a lane would open to the job he’s long sought.

That among the NFL’s 32 teams, one of them would see him as an option to be offensive coordinator during last year’s hiring cycle.

An offer never came.

Now, after a disastrous 8-9 season and the firing of longtime head coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens are in the midst of a reset. New head coach Jesse Minter hired Declan Doyle for his offensive coordinator, and the Ravens moving on from Martin (replacing him with another Black QB coach). Across the NFL, just about every offensive coordinator job has been filled.

On his personal Instagram, Martin acknowledged the history he made in Baltimore, helming the NFL’s first quarterback room filled entirely with Black signal-callers and coaches in 2023.

“History was made. Enjoyed every minute of it!” he wrote. “God is Good, ALL the time!”

Yet Martin’s lack of upward mobility after his success in Baltimore is impossible to detach from the larger narrative in the NFL. For a league in which 70% of players are Black, the pathways to power remain limited. Ten head coaches were hired this offseason; none was Black, and only one was a person of color (Titans coach Robert Saleh is Lebanese-American).

The Banner spoke with Martin and those near him over the past year to chronicle his push to join the pipeline that could propel him to be a head coach.

Martin, who is searching for his next stop as coaching staffs fill quickly, declined to discuss the end of his Ravens tenure.

Who gets the credit?

Martin was always hesitant to take credit away from Jackson, a generational talent he once dreamed about coaching. But he’ll tell you the shared accomplishment he’s most proud of.

When Martin became Jackson’s position coach in 2023, he was determined the two would silence the doubters. Jackson had won one MVP in 2019, but that wasn’t enough.

“The operation of the quarterback position, the presnap operation, the protection operation, the audibles at the line of scrimmage, things of that nature, was something that everyone said the young man couldn’t do, wouldn’t be able to do, couldn’t develop in that way,” Martin said in an interview with The Banner in August. “And I had a chip on my shoulder when I took the job to prove doubters wrong in that way.”

Martin said he introduced new drills and he started leaving a packet of information for the Ravens’ next opponent in Jackson’s locker at the conclusion of each game.

Randy Sanders, Martin’s former Tennessee quarterbacks coach and mentor, said it’s hard to parse who is responsible for what, especially from the outside, but he remembers conversations with Martin about how he hoped to help Jackson with his base (his stance when preparing to throw). Sanders, who spent over two decades coaching quarterbacks, noticed Jackson’s mechanics and footwork have improved greatly since Martin started working with him.

Every running quarterback needs to learn to be a pocket passer, said Woody McCorvey, another former coach and mentor to Martin who became the first Black college offensive coordinator in Alabama history. Martin had been forced to make similar adjustments as an athletic quarterback playing for the University of Tennessee.

Jackson flourished as a passer under Martin. His two best seasons in completion percentage and total passing yards were in 2023 and 2024.

Jackson won his second MVP in 2023 and arguably should have won a third in 2024 after he broke multiple NFL records.

The perfect stepping stone

Martin did not get his promotion to quarterbacks coach because he went looking for it. Rather, Harbaugh pushed him to interview for it.

Martin took advantage of the opportunity. He’d dreamed of being a coordinator and eventually a head coach before he ever pursued his NFL playing career, and coaches identified the qualities of a future coach in him early.

In addition to having leadership qualities, Martin was a deep thinker – “much more of a scientist than he was just an athlete,” Sanders said. Phillip Fulmer, Martin’s coach at Tennessee, pointed out you have to have a high football IQ to throw 23 completions in a row, as Martin once did. That set an NCAA record at the time.

Martin “detoured” from the coaching track as he pursued his own NFL career, spending time as a backup quarterback. That meant he was much older than a lot of other coordinators and coordinator candidates on the side of the ball where teams chase new, hip faces.

But that’s also what makes him a great coach, according to Johnson.

“He understands how to see defenses, how to pull them apart,” Johnson said. “And, to me, I don’t know how many play-callers actually played the position in the league, but I mean, I feel like that should be an advantage for him.”

After he retired as a player, it took time for Martin to figure out what he wanted to do before he began grinding through the coaching ranks. He started as a private trainer for quarterbacks. Then he worked at high schools and a historically Black college before he went to the Southeastern Conference, the Pac-12 and the NFL, mostly serving as a wide receivers coach.

Harbaugh gave him his desired position coaching quarterbacks — the job that gets the most looks when teams are hiring coordinators.

As Sanders said, quarterbacks are the only ones who need to know what all 11 players on offense and all 11 players on defense are doing. Position coaches need an advanced understanding of the entire offense.

But Fulmer, Sanders and McCorvey all have higher expectations for Martin than coordinator.

“My dream is that one day he can be a head football coach,” McCorvey said. “And I hope that it will happen in the National Football League. Because I would just like to see him have that opportunity. And, if he gets that opportunity, I know he’s going to make the most of it.”

Added Sanders: “I think Tee can stand up in front of a group of men in a room and they will trust him and listen to him.”

Waiting for the call

In 2024, Jackson became the first quarterback in NFL history to pass for over 4,000 yards and rush for more than 800 yards. He was named first-team All-Pro and had a strong case for back-to-back MVP awards.

And yet his position coach did not get a call in that hiring cycle.

Some of that was by design, Martin admitted.

After going through coordinator interviews in 2023, Martin got the feeling a lot of teams were calling only to “check a box.” By that he meant the “Rooney Rule,” which requires teams to interview at least two minority candidates for head coach, general manager and coordinator openings, and at least one for quarterbacks coach openings and “any senior level executive position at the club.”

He knows what it’s like to be recruited and to recruit, so Martin thinks he can tell when attention is sincere. He requested that his agent pass along only teams that were serious.

Not only did Martin not get any calls, but no Black candidates were hired to be offensive coordinators for the 2025 season.

“I don’t think it means it’s not working,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in 2024 when asked why the league had zero diverse offensive coordinators. “These offensive assistants are young, and they need the ability to have the exposure and the experience to grow to be able to become offensive coordinators and then head coaches. I think it’s too early to say it’s not working. I don’t accept that.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago Bears hired Doyle, then 28, and the Jacksonville Jaguars hired 29-year-old Grant Udinski to be offensive coordinators during that same offseason. Doyle had been an NFL position coach for only two years. Udinski, a former Towson player, had only been an assistant position coach.

Doyle and Udinski were far from the only coordinators with less experience than Martin, who is 47 and has 20 years of coaching experience, 12 years in college and five in the NFL.

Compared to the 32 offensive coordinators who coached in 2025, Martin would have been tied for eighth oldest. Twenty-six had fewer years of experience as the head position coach on an NFL team than Martin (5) when they got their first opportunity to be an NFL coordinator. Five never held a job as a position coach (although two were pass game coordinators and one worked his way through the college ranks).

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Martin said. “The hiring and firing has spoken for itself, and it’s something that needs to be addressed. I think it ultimately starts with being in the room, coaching the quarterback.”

League sources who requested anonymity in order to discuss the situation told The Banner they suspected Jackson’s talent was held against Martin, that decision-makers felt anybody could succeed coaching a player so talented. But Sanders said that even Peyton Manning, whom Martin played behind at Tennessee, always said he needed a coach.

Plus, “the hardest guys to coach are the ones that are the most talented, because it’s so easy for guys like that to kind of lose focus or start trying to do things their way, because they are so talented and they’ve had so much success,” Sanders said.

Martin previously said he had to keep Jackson’s brain challenged in meeting rooms.

Additionally, quarterbacks coaches who have worked with extraordinary players — Manning, Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow — have gotten looks. Three of Brady’s quarterbacks coaches were promoted or hired to coordinator roles within two years. Two of Aaron Rodgers’ coaches became coordinators within three years, and two of Josh Allen’s coaches have become coordinators within three years, including Joe Brady, who coached him for less than two seasons.

Brady was recently promoted to Buffalo’s head coach.

Jackson is already one of the game’s greats, and yet Martin has been unable to land a coordinator job — and now doesn’t even have a quarterback room to lead.

He did, despite the Ravens’ struggles this year, interview for the open coordinator roles with the Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions. However, both teams went with a different candidate.

Of 15 open offensive coordinator positions this season, two have been filled by Black men (including Mike McDaniel, who identifies as mixed race) and 11 by white men.

“Only thing we got to do is keep going and going,” McCorvey said. “And life has been a cycle. It’s going to come back around. And, when that chance comes, I want guys like Tee to take it and go and prove what they can do.”

Two offensive coordinator jobs remain open. Neither the Arizona Cardinals nor Las Vegas Raiders have requested to interview Martin.

Martin’s chances of moving up this coaching cycle might be over. If those positions fill, he will have to shoot for another quarterback coaching position or evaluate another path.

If nothing else, he can walk away from Baltimore knowing he made history on the field, both by helping to coach a historically great offense and by leading the league’s first all-Black NFL room.

“I’ve just been blessed to have these [coaching] influences around me, learning all I can, and what happens next happens next,” Martin said in August. “I’ll be prepared for it because I’m confident in what I’ve learned through my experiences in the past.”