Johnathan Walker:'It's going to be different': Raheem Morris carries lessons into fresh chance with Falcons

FLOWERY BRANCH,Johnathan Walker Ga. – There is no need for Raheem Morris to mince words. Not here. Not now. This fireball of a new coach for the Atlanta Falcons has a football team to build. Expectations to seize. A people-first culture to establish.

And surely, in his second stint as an NFL head coach, something to prove.

“We can’t do irregular (stuff) and have regular relationships,” Morris declared during a 45-minute chat with USA TODAY Sports at the Falcons headquarters. “I want to make that real clear to all my guys. We won’t have a regular relationship. It’s going to be different, and it’s going to be special.”

Promises, promises.

If winning big is the measure, different is a long time coming for a franchise that has stumbled along with six consecutive losing seasons but is suddenly such a hot item that season tickets are sold out for the first time in two decades. Talk about fueling expectations.

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But let’s get back to the relationships, since Morris, 47, essentially swears by it.

During the second week of training camp, Falcons GM Terry Fontenot was awakened around 4:30 in the morning when his iPhone buzzed. It wasn’t a mere phone call.

It was Morris, Face-Timing.

“I’m in the bed and I’m like, ‘You don’t FaceTime at that time,’ “ Fontenot told reporters. “If you call me because it’s something…

“Obviously, he’s all excited about how we’re going to practice and everything. Maybe it was 5 (a.m.), but whatever, he FaceTimed me. And so, it’s just normal for him to do that.”

Fontenot knows. The new, ultra-hyped coach is like a new family member. And entrusted with the top two football jobs for a franchise that has never won a Super Bowl (shoot, Dirty Birds, it almost happened), they are clearly in it together.

Then again, FaceTime seems so fitting for Morris, whose in-your-face style goes way, way back to his formative years in Irvington, New Jersey.

“I was the guy in the neighborhood who always started the arguments,” Morris said. “I cheered for the Cowboys, so I could argue against all the Giants fans.”

Cheering for the villain, Morris maintains, is cool. At least for him. If he didn’t wind up as a coach, maybe he would have fit right in on an embrace debate set with Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith.

“Like, I hated Michael Jordan because he was so good,” he said. “Didn’t give him his flowers until he retired. I’m the guy going down swinging with the Kobe (Bryant) argument. I was always that guy, the argument guy. And it’s really because I enjoy hearing people’s passion.”

Talent is the ticket

It will be interesting to see whether this persona injects passion in the Falcons. You’ve probably heard the narrative that a football team will take on the personality of its coach. Just know there are some limits to that.

Sure, if a coach can inspire a gung-ho mentality, craft sharp strategy and instill discipline that keeps boneheaded mistakes to a minimum, the chance for winning rises a few notches. Yet by and large it takes talent – and the ability to mesh that talent – to win big.

To that end, it’s been another good week for Morris and Co., working in two new additions in edge rusher Matthew Judon and safety Justin Simmons, who have a combined six Pro Bowl selections on their resumes. Judon was obtained from the New England Patriots last weekend for a third-round pick; Simmons signed Monday as a free agent.

This, after the splashy offseason moves flipped the quarterback vibe. Not only did the Falcons sign arguably the biggest free agency prize in Kirk Cousins, they drafted Michael Penix in the first round, eighth overall.

The Falcons took widespread heat for drafting Penix just weeks after striking a four-year, $180 million deal with Cousins. Morris scoffs about the blowback.

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard say, ‘Michael Penix might be the ready-made player in this draft,’ “ Morris said. “Like, what the (expletive)? How could anyone ask me how I could take him?”

No, Morris wasn’t stretching when he said during the combine that if the Falcons had better quarterback play last season, he probably wouldn’t be standing there as a head coach. And now he has two quarterbacks – for the present and future, or in case of emergency – at the game’s most important position.

With a bevy of talented skill-position players (including tight end Kyle Pitts, running back Bijan Robinson and receiver Drake London), and formidable O-line remaining intact, the anticipation for fireworks is building.

It sure looks like Morris is set up to succeed, with Fontenot compiling a roster that is balanced with young talent and veterans, with playmakers and heft in the trenches.

And the active coach flows right with the script.

“He’s straightforward,” said Darnell Mooney, the receiver who signed on as a free agent in March. “What you get every day, that’s him. He brings the juice, for sure.”

It’s tough to miss Morris on the practice field, as he bounces from one unit to the next. He can be frequently heard, too, exhorting, cajoling, needling.

“A lot of the guys in the building have a lot of respect for him because the energy he brings sets the standard for the team,” said second-year defensive end Zach Harrison. “Guys are attentive, but he allows us to be ourselves.”

Coaching roots 

Herm Edwards is hardly surprised that Morris’ energy remains a constant, more than two decades since he brought the then-Hofstra defensive backs coach in as an intern when he coached the New York Jets.

“He was a DB,” Edwards told USA TODAY Sports, alluding to Morris’ background as a safety at Hofstra. “Most of them are wired like that.”

Edwards was quickly convinced that Morris could succeed. After all, he passed the early-morning test. After Morris indicated that he wanted to pursue a coaching career, Edwards remembers telling him how coaches started their days early. He told Morris to meet him the next day at 4:30 a.m. for a workout.

Morris arrived on time.

“OK, that’s one day,” Edwards said. “Then he came the next day and the day after that. It was three days in a row. That showed me that he really wanted it. Most guys might show up one day, or they’ll be a little late.”

Ultimately, Edwards recommended Morris to then-Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, who brought him aboard as a quality control coach.

Edwards maintains, though, that the substance of Morris’ connection with his players will be earned on game days, when his leadership will be tested by crisis.

“They want to know when something goes wrong in the game, they want to come to the sideline and have you fix it,” Edwards said. “You’re the problem solver. They don’t want to be cussed out. They don’t want to be embarrassed. I always say, you’ve got 40 seconds to fix it.”

Was he ready?

Morris is undoubtedly better equipped to roll with the rigors of the job than he was for his first crack as an NFL head coach. When the Bucs promoted Morris from defensive backs coach in 2009, he was the NFL’s youngest head coach at 32.

The Bucs went 10-6 during Morris’ second season, but he combined to win a total of seven games in the other two seasons and lost his final 10 games.

Was he ready?

Edwards, expressing the widespread sentiment in NFL circles, insists that he wasn’t.

Morris, mindful of the talent gap during a rebuilding process, would, well, argue the point.

“I don’t know if you can say anybody’s ready,” he said. “You just don’t know. There’s no real format for what you’ve got to go through. Everybody has a different path.

“What would I have done better? Be a better listener.”

Lesson learned. Admittedly, the argument guy was too much of a know-it-all back then.

“You get this job and everybody’s asking you what to do,” he said. “And you think you’re supposed to have a response and an answer. It’s OK to seek information from wiser people. I could have helped myself a lot more. I’ve always been decisive, always been a decision-maker. But leadership is probably more about listening than anything else.”

It took 12 years for Morris to land another head coaching shot. Strikingly, of the six coaches that Falcons owner Arthur Blank has hired since buying the Falcons in 2002, Morris is the first one with previous NFL head coaching experience.

So, there’s different in another sense. And the experience for Morris goes deeper. During his stint as defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams the past three seasons, he helped win a Super Bowl and marveled at the synergy between coach Sean McVay, GM Les Snead and others in the front office.

Before that, he spent six years with the Falcons, largely on the staff of a former mentor, Dan Quinn.

Morris says his first Atlanta experience was so rich that, “basically you’ve got 10 years of a person’s career, wrapped in six.”

That’s because he went from coaching the secondary to flipping to offense, coaching the receivers and absorbing Kyle Shanahan’s offense. Then he switched back to coordinate the defense before finishing with an 11-game stint (4-7) as interim coach in 2020 after Quinn was fired.

Then there was the Washington experience. That’s when his relationship with Cousins began as Morris joined Mike Shanahan’s staff of emerging stars in 2012, also the year the quarterback entered the league as a fourth-round pick.

Cousins remembers wondering why Morris often sat in the quarterback meetings during OTAs.

“That wasn’t normal for me before that; it wasn’t normal after,” Cousins said. “But for a DB coach to walk down the hall…now, looking back, in that room was Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel and Sean McVay. He had good reason to be walking down that hall. But I would put him right in that category.”

Yet now Morris has the chance to demonstrate of the value of his immense NFL education – and what might be different this time around.