The Athletic’s Jeff Zrebiec named Mike Green the Baltimore Ravens‘ breakout candidate for 2026 in the outlet’s team-by-team breakout piece published Monday, and the detail inside his reasoning explains the optimism better than the label does. New defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, Zrebiec writes, believes Green “could have very easily had a 10-sack season” as a rookie — and showed him a video cut-up of every near-miss to prove it.
The counting stats were modest: 3.5 sacks and 41 tackles from the 2025 second-round pick, who played more than expected after the Odafe Oweh trade in a down year for the defense as a whole. But the distance between 3.5 sacks and double digits is mostly finishing — the half-step late, the tackle recovering at the last instant, the ball out one beat early. A near-miss cut-up is a map of plays that were almost production, and a coaching staff that bothers to assemble one is telling the player exactly where his next season lives.
The surrounding cast should help convert some of those margins. Head coach Jesse Minter brought Weaver in to rebuild a unit that slipped badly last season, and Zrebiec cites Trey Hendrickson — signed away from Cincinnati in March — along with Zion Young and a potential return from Nnamdi Madubuike as forces that could pull protection attention away from Green. A rusher’s sack total is partly a function of who else the offense has to account for, and for the first time in his young career, Green won’t be the priority on the protection call.
What separates a good pass rush from a championship one is precisely this conversion of pressure into finish, and Baltimore has scheduled early tests. Rookies and quarterbacks report July 24 with veterans following July 28, and the joint practices against Minnesota on Aug. 19-20 will offer the first honest look at whether last year’s near-misses have started landing.
For IDP fantasy purposes, Green is the classic post-hype second-year edge: rookie production low enough to keep his draft price down, snap share and coaching investment high enough to matter. He profiles as a DL2 with double-digit-sack upside, and he’s a priority dynasty stash before August practice reports give everyone else the same idea.
