Raheem Morris has built a coaching staff with an eye on promise

Morris has built a coaching staff light on years in the league and long on bright tomorrows.

The description of Raheem Morris I like best comes from former Atlanta Falcons head coach Dan Quinn, who had Morris on his staff all five years in Atlanta and was replaced by him as the team’s interim when DQ was unceremoniously dumped after an 0-5 start to the 2020 season. In an article from The Athletic’s Josh Kendall, Morris is summed up by Quinn as “the rare both.”

“The first thing I would say about him is there are a lot of really good coaches scheme-wise and there’s a lot of good coaches who are connectors of people, player to coach, coach to coach. He can do both,” Quinn said. “Not every coach can do that, have the teaching skills, the connecting and the scheme to go along with that. The best of the best have that.”

I like this because it touches on the football acumen and the much-heralded people skills, but it also adds on something that I think perhaps everyone has glossed over a little bit. Morris is a coach praised for his teaching skills by many others outside of Quinn—and he graduated with a degree in physical education from Hofstra, which means it’s not hard to imagine him being everyone’s favorite teacher in another life—and he has knowledge and wisdom to impart, built up from a long career in coaching with all the successes and failures that entails. Morris has seen his own career rise to meteoric heights before crashing down again and forcing him to climb back up to a head coaching job rung by rung, and as Terrin Waack wrote for AtlantaFalcons.com, that experience has been a great teacher for Morris and has led to what he calls a different mindset than he had when running the Buccaneers back in the day.

“It is 100%,” Morris said. “When you’re 32 years old, you’ve got all the answers. Just ask me, and I’ll tell you.

“What you find out is it’s a learning process every single day, and you’d better be able to lean on people and talk to people and find out what is the best thing that works. … I told (Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot) in my interview process, I said, ‘Hey, I don’t need to be the smartest person in the building. I want to hire. I want to have. I want to contribute. I want to collaborate with all the smart people that you’ve assembled.’”

Morris clearly remembers the opportunities he earned and was given along the way, and as seen in his time with the Rams, he’s put those teaching skills to work giving opportunities to young players and coaches and helping them make the most of those chances. Those underwhelmed by the statistical output for the Rams defense should remember that it was loaded up with younger players outside of the great Aaron Donald, very few of them top draft picks. It’s also why collaboration is not just the buzzword a Falcons organization adept at buzzwords has made it in the past, but something that Morris embodies and lives.

All of this preamble matters because it’s clearly informing how Morris is building his staff in Atlanta. Zac Robinson is a first-time offensive coordinator Morris has compared favorably to Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, coaches he overlapped with in Washington, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and has shown dating back to his days as a Pro Football Focus analyst that he has a keen eye for quarterbacks. Jimmy Lake has been a head coach and defensive coordinator at the college level, but has never held that title in the NFL and is now being handed the keys to play calling on that side of the ball for Morris’s Falcons, with assistant head coach Jerry Gray praising Lake for diving into what the Falcons did well on defense last year instead of just looking to clear the decks.

Morris has plucked Green Bay defensive quality control coach Justin Hood as his secondary coach, Lance Schulters out of unemployment after he last coached with the Rams in 2022 to make him a defensive assistant in Atlanta, and Barrett Ruud as inside linebackers coach despite Ruud last having held that same title with Nebraska in 2022 and never having coached at the pro level. Ike Hilliard was last a wide receivers coach for Auburn in 2022 before Morris picked him up to hold that position with the Falcons in 2024. The list goes on, with coaches of limited experience and/or experience in other roles getting promotions and new opportunities in Atlanta. Hell, even T.J. Yates is getting his first crack at being a quarterbacks coach in the NFL, switching over from receivers coach last year.

When Arthur Smith was hired, he made similar bets on his chosen side of the ball, given that he was the experienced play caller. He inserted Charles London into the quarterbacks coach role despite London coaching running backs in the NFL before then, installed Dave Ragone as a first-time offensive coordinator, and so forth. On defense, however, he recognized his own lack of expertise and hired Dean Pees and an extremely veteran coaching staff to try to stabilize that side of the ball, turning to a new hire in Ryan Nielsen after Pees retired. It was a mix of experience and promise, with an emphasis on NFL-level connections with coaches like Pees and Ragone.

But Morris seems to be making a big bet on people and not resumes, on promise and not experience, on bright futures and not shiny yesteryears. That’s a gamble, but one the new Falcons head coach clearly believes is worth taking, and one that Arthur Blank and company seem invested in. You can see the thought process with a coach like Robinson, who has learned from some of the brightest offensive minds in the game and who was heavily involved in crafting a killer passing attack for the Rams in 2023. You can understand it with a coach like Lake, who has managed an entire college program and was trusted as an assistant head coach for McVay last year in addition to his many years of experience in a variety of defensive roles, even if they weren’t at the pro level. And you can understand if Morris looks at Ruud and Hilliard, who played for the Buccaneers when Morris was coaching there, and sees smart players he respected who have the teaching skills to elevate the Falcons they’ll have the responsibility of coaching up. That’s a bet that could be a little fraught—will these skills translate to new roles, especially at the pro level?—but it fits what we understand about Morris and how he wants to run this team perfectly.

That’s not to say the staff is devoid of experience. Jerry Gray has been coaching forever now and at a high level, while Dwayne Ledford entering his fourth year as the offensive line coach for Atlanta has obvious value given the stellar work he’s done with high-end linemen and one-year stopgaps alike. Marquice Williams is now a seasoned special teams coordinator in his own right, and like Gray and Ledford, remains part of this staff. Most importantly, Morris is the man who is going to oversee the development of this staff and these players, and he’s been coaching in the NFL for over two decades now, with experience as a head coach, defensive coordinator, wide receivers head coach, and so forth. He and Gray, who has been coaching in the NFL uninterrupted since 1997, have seen and experienced enough to guide this staff through choppy waters, some of which are likely inevitable.

Morris has built most of this staff on potential, though. In some cases, that comes without a ton of hands-on NFL experience in their chosen role, based on what he sees as their considerable promise and ability. I’m certain that Morris has spent enough time dwelling on the past—his own, this franchise’s when he was on staff for their Super Bowl collapse and the slow motion demolition that followed it, and even his recent success with the Rams—and his hires reflect a desire to craft a tomorrow the Falcons and Morris can celebrate.