Packers Will Interview Ravens’ Zach Orr for Defensive Coordinator

Former NFL linebacker Zach Orr spent the last two seasons leading Patrick Queen and Roquan Smith as the Ravens’ inside linebackers coach.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Taking a patient approach to finding his next defensive coordinator, Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur waited through Sunday’s AFC Championship Game before requesting interviews with a couple assistant coaches from the powerful Baltimore Ravens.

Along with defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson, LaFleur has put in a request to interview Ravens inside linebackers coach Zach Orr, according to NFL Network.

Orr spent the last two seasons with the Ravens. Spurred by Orr’s elite tandem of Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen, Baltimore in 2023 led the NFL in points allowed, sacks and takeaways. Baltimore allowed 16.5 points per game en route to earning the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs and advancing to the AFC Championship Game. While it lost game, it held Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs to 17 points.

While the Ravens finished 25th with 4.48 yards allowed per rushing attempt in 2023, they were third with a 3.86-yard average in 2022.

Packers linebacker Kristian Welch played under Orr in 2022.

A member of the North Texas athletic hall of fame, Orr piled up 365 tackles for the Mean Green from 2010 through 2013. He went undrafted in 2014 and landed in Baltimore, where he played in 46 games in three seasons. In 2016, he started 15 games and tallied 133 tackles, three interceptions, five passes defensed and one forced fumble to earn second-team All-Pro.

He was forced to retire after the season due to a congenital neck/spine condition in which a doctor told him he could “die, on the spot” if he took “one hit the wrong way.” After a second opinion, he considered playing, anyway, but ultimately joined the Ravens’ coaching staff, starting as a coaching and personnel analyst in 2017.

“As a player, I understood the game pretty well, but coaching is a whole different deal,” Orr said. “It’s not what you know, it’s what can you teach the players and what they can retain and what they know.”

He got his first big opportunity as outside linebackers coach in Jacksonville in 2021 before returning to Baltimore in 2022.

“He's always got that fire,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “You could always count on Zach. If you asked him his opinion, he's telling it to you. You appreciate that, because he's got conviction.

“I see confidence all the time, and now I see even growing competence. He really has learned the game. He [was] a very smart player, who's taken the time to study and learn the game, and he's become a good teacher. He breaks things down well and presents it to the guys very well. He's doing a really good job.”

The Ravens operated out of a 3-4 base defense under coordinator Mike Macdonald.

Orr, whose younger brother, Chris Orr, played linebacker at Wisconsin and is a member of the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL, is just 31.

“I couldn’t compete with these guys right now. I have no itch” to play, he said. “I’ve fully transitioned into straight coach. I know I played but I kind of forget that I played. I’m fully into this coaching deal. It’s great that I’m in that mind space because it allows me to be the best coach I can possibly be.”

Orr is the sixth known candidate. There probably have been others.

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