Ravens Open Camp With Six on PUP — and the Best News Is About Nnamdi Madubuike

The best piece of Baltimore Ravens news this week came wrapped in what usually counts as bad news. On July 25, the team placed six players on the physically unable to perform list to open training camp — and the headliner, Nnamdi Madubuike, is the reason to feel better, not worse. The two-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle, who had neck surgery after going down in Week 2 last season, has been cleared by independent spine and cervical specialists and could be practicing within a week, per The Athletic's Jeff Zrebiec. Rookies, quarterbacks, and rehabbing veterans reported to Owings Mills on July 24; the rest of the roster arrives Tuesday, July 28; and on Wednesday, Jesse Minter runs his first training camp practice as an NFL head coach. A new era in Baltimore starts now, whether the franchise was ready to leave the old one or not.

The PUP List: Six Names, One Big Sigh of Relief

Here's the full group that opened camp on active PUP, all eligible to be activated at any time:

• Nnamdi Madubuike, DT — cleared to return from last September's neck surgery; on PUP mainly for conditioning and reacclimation, with a return to practice possibly days away.
• Travis Jones, DT — coming off a career year (a team-best 47 tackles among defensive linemen) and a recent three-year extension; the team has not specified the injury.
• John Jenkins, DT — the 37-year-old played every game last season and re-signed on a one-year deal.
• Teddye Buchanan, ILB — third on the team with 93 tackles as a rookie before a December knee injury; rehabbing aggressively.
• Adisa Isaac, OLB — just four games in two injury-wrecked seasons, including elbow surgery and a year on injured reserve.
• Bilhal Kone, CB — missed all of 2025 after tearing his ACL and MCL in a preseason game against the Colts.

Notice a pattern? Three of the six are interior defensive linemen. Until Madubuike and Jones are back in pads, camp reps up front will go to a very thin rotation — worth remembering when the first depth-chart panic sets in.

Jesse Minter's First Camp, and Life After Harbaugh

It still reads strangely: the Ravens will open a season without John Harbaugh for the first time since 2007. Baltimore hired Minter away from the Chargers, where he ran one of the league's best defenses, to replace the winningest coach in franchise history. The mandate is not subtle. The Ravens have a roster built around a franchise quarterback in his prime and a defense that badly underperformed its talent last season — Baltimore managed just 30 sacks in 2025, tied for third-fewest in the league, a year after posting 54. Minter's entire career says that number is the first thing he'll fix.

Minter inherits real building blocks on his side of the ball. Roquan Smith still runs the middle of the defense, Kyle Hamilton remains one of the sport's most versatile chess pieces, Nate Wiggins is emerging at corner, and Marlon Humphrey gives the staff flexibility inside and out. What the group lacked last year wasn't talent — it was juice up front, and that's precisely the problem a defensive head coach was hired to solve.

The sting of how last season ended hasn't gone anywhere, either. Baltimore's playoff hopes died in Week 18 against Pittsburgh, a heartbreak loss sealed by a missed would-be walk-off field goal that handed the Steelers the final playoff spot instead. A season that began with Super Bowl expectations ended with the Ravens watching January football from home, and within weeks the franchise had a new head coach. That's the frame for everything happening in Owings Mills this summer.

An Offseason of Real Losses — and One Trade That Vanished

No AFC contender lost more familiar faces this spring. Tyler Linderbaum, arguably the best center in football, signed a record-setting deal with the Raiders — and reporting this month from The Athletic indicated the two sides were never actually close, despite GM Eric DeCosta's insistence that Baltimore made a market-topping offer. Isaiah Likely took a three-year, $40 million deal from the Giants to reunite with Harbaugh in New York. Charlie Kolar and Keaton Mitchell landed with the Chargers, Dre'Mont Jones with the Patriots, Alohi Gilman with the Chiefs, and veterans like DeAndre Hopkins and Chidobe Awuzie hit the market.

That is a lot of production and locker-room tenure walking out the door in one offseason, and it puts pressure on the young receivers and tight ends already on the roster to absorb bigger roles immediately.

And then there's the trade that almost changed everything. In March, Baltimore agreed to send first-round picks in 2026 and 2027 to Las Vegas for Maxx Crosby — the first time the franchise had ever dealt a first-rounder for a veteran. The deal died on March 11 when Crosby failed his physical following January knee surgery, and the Ravens walked away with both picks intact. They spent the first of them, No. 14 overall, on Penn State guard Vega Ioane, a mauler who immediately enters a left guard competition with Andrew Vorhees while John Simpson holds down the right side. The unresolved part: center, where Linderbaum's departure leaves the position, in the words of one report, a question mark.

Lamar Jackson, the Contract Cloud That Won't Move

Hovering over all of it is the quarterback. Lamar Jackson's contract situation remains unresolved, and July reporting has projected both a massive next deal and the possibility that Jackson turns down Baltimore's current offers to let the market keep climbing. The team's own offseason preview acknowledged the situation could meaningfully affect its cap planning. None of this suggests acrimony — but until there's a signature, every camp press conference will include the question. Around him, the offense returns Derrick Henry, Mark Andrews, and Zay Flowers, who has now posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, while Rashod Bateman looks to rebound from a 224-yard year. If Madubuike's return stabilizes the defense, this roster's ceiling is still exactly what it's been: a Super Bowl, with the usual Baltimore caveat about January.

Ravens Camp Schedule and the Road to Week 1

Minter's first camp will be unusually public. Baltimore is hosting 12 free open practices starting July 29, with a new shuttle system from Metro Centre allowing roughly 2,000 fans per session, plus a big-venue practice at Maryland's SECU Stadium on August 1. The key dates from there:

• August 15: preseason opener vs. Philadelphia at M&T Bank Stadium
• August 19-20: joint practices with the Vikings, then the August 22 game in Minnesota
• August 26: joint practice with Washington ahead of the August 28 preseason finale
• August 30: roster cuts to 53
• September 13: season opener at Indianapolis
• September 27: Week 3 vs. Dallas in Rio de Janeiro — the first NFL game ever played in Rio

There's also a Sunday night trip to Atlanta in Week 5 and a season-closing gauntlet of four straight AFC North games, ending at home against Pittsburgh. The schedule-makers clearly remember how last year ended, too.

So that's the week in Baltimore Ravens news: a PUP list that doubles as a countdown clock, a first-time head coach inheriting a win-now roster, and a quarterback contract saga idling in the background. The real stuff starts Wednesday morning, when Minter blows his first whistle and we begin learning what a post-Harbaugh Baltimore actually looks like. If Madubuike is back on the field by then, camp will have already delivered its first win.