Raheem Morris is back in the head coaching business, and he’s putting to use a lifetime of lessons learned in the NFL.
The Atlanta Falcons’ first-year coach sat down with Robert Mays, host of The Athletic Football Show, as Morris’s team went through OTAs this month. They talked about what shaped his perspective for the opportunity in front of him and his team right now, the organizational ethos he wants to set, and why the Falcons pulled the trigger on one of the most surprising moves of the 2024 NFL draft.
The partial transcript below has been edited for clarity. The full interview is available now in The Athletic Football Show’s podcast feed.
On what he’s learned since his first opportunity as a head coach, with the Tampa Bay Bucs
Mays: You had to wait a long time for this. Was there any moment — whether it was the types of guys getting hired or certain trends — that was particularly disheartening as you were waiting for a second chance?
Morris: I answer this question all the time. It’s so funny. I feel like I do a repeat interview every time I talk, but it would be so selfish of me, right? Because I was one of the few people at 32 years old who was a head coach. To say I had to wait a long time is such a selfish statement, when you got guys like Bruce Arians who waited until 60 to be a head coach the first time. So I always felt fortunate to be a head coach at 32. I felt fortunate to be a coordinator for a very long time. I felt fortunate to be able to go from offense to defense or defense to offense within that time, while I was waiting to be a head coach again. I felt fortunate to be promoted to an interim head coach, to be at a lead again in a short-term fashion, and then to be able to go to L.A. as a coordinator and lead a team to a Super Bowl and win and then find a way to bounce back after the bad season. So I felt like all of those experiences were really learning experiences. And when you’re doing really good things, it goes really fast. So I never got to the “woe is me” mentality because I never felt like I was one of the guys that was slighted out of an opportunity. I had an opportunity. It didn’t work out how you quite wanted, and the next thing you had to do was get ready for the next time it came up. And I always felt like it would come because I always had opportunities to interview. I always had opportunities to do well, always had opportunities to go to the playoffs and advance and win more championships, whether we were talking about in Atlanta or we were talking about L.A. and that just created habits for myself in order to make me better. And I always felt like everywhere I was, in the people that I was around, I had a chance to get better and better every time. Every single time.
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Mays: How did you see that collaboration manifest [with the Rams]? Is it when those guys met? Is that the topics that they would discuss — like, what did that actually look like in practice with Les [Snead] and Sean [McVay] in L.A.?
Morris: So it’d be hard for me to talk about when it happened, because it was already going before I actually got there, and I was able to jump right in the middle. We’re talking about a group that had got together, had success, won a couple games, came out, had lost to us in Atlanta in the playoffs. The following year, [a group that] was able to go to a Super Bowl together, lose a Super Bowl together, and was able to bounce back and still win football games and get back together. And then, you know, fortunately enough for me, I was able to go out there and join those guys in a leadership role. And being close to Sean, he was able to bring me behind those back channels so I could see all of the things that they did do, and how it went down, and I got a close enough relationship with Les [Snead] that I was able to listen to him and see how it went down with him — to see, really, Les just be this nerd who just wanted to watch football and study players and be great. Then you watch Sean, who’s a nerd in his own right, who just wanted to call plays and just wanted to coach football and just wanted to be that guy. And then you watch those guys get together, and it was a great conversation. It was a great back and forth, thoughts or ideas bouncing off each other.
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On the decision to take Michael Penix Jr. with the 8th pick of the 2024 NFL Draft
Mays: Obviously, [Kirk Cousins] was not the only move you guys made at quarterback this offseason. Ultimately, what was the deciding factor that you guys made you think it was worth it — even after signing Kirk, even after being in kind of the win-now, urgent position that you’re in — to pick a guy like Michael Penix when you did?
Morris: Kirk gives us a chance to win a championship. Let’s not even put it any other way. When you talk about winning this division, once you get in, anything can happen. Kirk’s in his 12th year. And if we were to have drafted Kirk in Year One in 2012 and he had been an Atlanta Falcon up until this point, we’d be looking for somebody to come in and be ready to be the heir apparent and take over the reins. Hopefully getting Kirk here, we’re not going to be in any position to pick a quarterback. You’re sitting there with the eighth pick, you evaluate the quarterbacks before and after free agency. You evaluate all the positions, and you’re sitting there at [no. 8], and the guy you got very high on your board is staring at you. With a chance to pick them. A guy that you believe in. A guy that’s got a lot of similar traits to the guy that you’re going to know will lead you this year and do the things that he’s done. Guy that has a cannon of an arm. A processor. Humble. Fits your ethos. Does everything the right way. A guy that you can bring in here and sit behind a guy for a couple of years, no matter how long it takes. And say, here’s our heir apparent. Let’s go to work. Now did it shock everybody, catch you by surprise because of the amount of investment that you put into the room? Yes. Is it the most important position potentially arguably in sports? No doubt. And we just felt like if we can fix that room and we can fix that thing short-term, we can fix it long-term.
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Mays: What was the moment in the process that you knew you would have felt comfortable doing this with Michael?
Morris: We graded Michael very high, and he had some really high grades in our building — particularly myself, particularly a bunch of the people in the room. We had a quarterback contingent, which talked about him at an almost annoying point at this point, with Zac Robinson, T.J. Yates, T.J. Williams, K.J. Black, Ken Zampese, Chandler Whitmer. They’re all guys that have been around quarterbacks. So we just talked about the quarterbacks they’ve been around. My guy at the Chargers, the famous guy in New Orleans, Matt Ryan, Matt Stafford. These guys have been around and know what it looks like. You get the best evaluators in the house, in the world, to do it. Let’s believe it. Stick with our guns and go with it. We get to the pick, and he’s there. Pull the trigger.
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On Bijan Robinson’s importance to the Falcons offense
Mays: Who were you most excited about building a plan for as you guys got started with the foundation of the offense?
Morris: Bijan was coached by [Steve Sarkisian], who worked with us in Atlanta. And you know a lot about that. And cheering for Texas was easy to do. And you know it starts with the run. You know, wherever you go, all old-school coaches will tell you it starts with the run, stop the run.
(Top photo: Dale Zanine / USA Today)