The Ravens' New Head Coach Grabbed the Mic and Did “Lose Yourself” — and the Whole Team Went With Him
Jesse Minter, 43, hired in January to replace John Harbaugh after 18 seasons, took rookie-duty karaoke at a Baltimore team dinner in Minnesota and performed Eminem's “Lose Yourself” to a room of players who filmed all of it. Watch the clip, and read why the song keeps ending up in NFL buildings — including the stat the Ravens buried in their own write-up.
By @bradleymines ·
A 43-year-old first-year head coach, an untucked button-down, a room full of NFL players holding up phones, and a 2002 Detroit rap record. This is the clip that has been running since Friday.
What actually happened
On Thursday, August 20, 2026, the Baltimore Ravens were in Minnesota for joint practices and a preseason game against the Vikings. After the second practice, the team had dinner — and at that dinner, rookie duty was in effect. In Baltimore this year that meant the rookies and the first-year head coach.
Jesse Minter took the microphone and performed Eminem's “Lose Yourself.” He did not bail after the first eight bars. Players crowded in, joined in, and filmed the whole thing. Rookie wide receiver Ja'Kobi Lane livestreamed it; rookie defensive lineman C.J. Okoye put video on Instagram. It was on X by Friday morning and on the Ravens' own official account by Saturday, August 22.
Lane had to take his own turn too — he sang a Kodak Black song, which the Ravens noted is Lamar Jackson's territory.
Watch it
Clip via ePro Team, the long-running Eminem fan channel.
The stat the Ravens buried in their own story
Baltimore's official write-up of the night included a line that is quietly the most interesting thing about the whole clip: 19 players on the current Ravens roster had not been born when “Lose Yourself” came out in 2002.
They all knew it anyway. That is the actual news here. A song that predates a third of the locker room is still the default thing an NFL team will shout together with no rehearsal and no lyric sheet — 24 years after the fact, called by the one man in the room whose job depends on all of them taking him seriously.
“Lose Yourself” was written for 8 Mile, spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and in March 2003 became the first hip-hop song ever to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It has since become permanent stadium furniture — pre-game, fourth quarter, playoff hype reel. What it is not, usually, is something a head coach performs himself, in front of the people he has to discipline on Monday.
Why Minter, specifically
This wasn't a random pick off a karaoke list. Four months earlier, at a fan event, Minter was asked which single artist he'd go see in concert if he could only pick one. He said Eminem. Then he got handed a microphone in front of his own team and had to prove it.
The context matters for Baltimore. Minter was hired in January 2026 as the fourth head coach in Ravens history, following John Harbaugh's 18 seasons — one of the longest tenures in the league. Replacing a coach who was there that long is mostly a question of whether the room buys in, and players had spent the summer publicly crediting Minter with bringing new energy to the building. A viral karaoke clip is not a football result. It is, however, exactly the kind of evidence a fanbase reads as one.
Even the opposing coach got involved: Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell joked afterward about whether Minter could come help with Minnesota's own rookie performances.
The Detroit-to-Baltimore line
Eminem has not commented on the clip, and there is no indication he has seen it. He has been almost entirely offline in 2026 — his 117-pair charity sneaker auction closed on August 25 without a word from him.
He does, though, have form on football. He performed at the Lions' Thanksgiving halftime show in 2025, and “Lose Yourself” was his segment of the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in 2022 — the same performance he wore the Air Jordan 3 “Slim Shady” PEs for, the shoes that just sold for $51,200 a pair.
Which is the neat symmetry of the week: on Thursday an NFL head coach rapped the song to bond a locker room, and by Tuesday the sneakers from the night Eminem performed it for a Super Bowl audience were the highest-priced items in his own charity auction. Same song, two very different rooms.
Sources. BaltimoreRavens.com (Quentin Corpuel, August 21, 2026) for the dinner, rookie duty, Ja'Kobi Lane and C.J. Okoye, the O'Connell exchange and the 19-player stat; ESPN (Jamison Hensley, August 21, 2026) for Minter's age, his hiring as Baltimore's fourth head coach in January 2026 after John Harbaugh's 18 seasons, and the fan-event answer naming Eminem. Video embedded from the ePro Team YouTube channel.