What’s Next for Bill Belichick After Falcons Hire Raheem Morris

The former Patriots coach could get shut out this coaching cycle. Plus, this has been a bounce-back year for people of color in head coaching positions, and the favorites to become Sean McVay’s defensive coordinator.

For those who were not inside the Atlanta Falcons’ facility lobbying for Raheem Morris to get the job this week (and apparently there were plenty), the news that he is now the team’s head coach may have registered as a surprise.

Of course, Morris, the one-time young wunderkind Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who climbed the long road back to coaching’s highest position, has deserved another crack at this job for a long time. In our 2024 coaching carousel primer this year, I asked one highly regarded offensive coach who the league’s defensive equivalent of the “hot play-caller.” The person’s answer? Raheem Morris. I think, had Morris been more closely associated with his time as an offensive coach, he may have landed the Indianapolis Colts’ job a year ago (though the team knew they were taking a quarterback and were fairly sold on Shane Steichen as a developer at the position).

The bigger surprise is that we may be looking at a year without Bill Belichick in the NFL for the first time since 1975, when he was an assistant under Baltimore Colts head coach Ted Marchibroda. I sensed the coaching industry was divided on Belichick throughout the winter. In December, I wrote that I expected Belichick to be on television in 2024. But there were definitely some folks who held onto the idea that, hey, it’s Bill Belichick, and you can’t not hire him if you have the chance.

Belichick’s chances of landing a head coaching job in 2024 seem unlikely after Morris’s hiring Thursday.

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Unless Belichick would take the unfathomable step of, say, being Sean McVay’s defensive coordinator, he may be in a surprisingly natural role as a storyteller or personality on television. I will say this: Belichick’s father, Steve, made a cottage industry out of advanced scouting. I would be completely horrified if Belichick was available for mercenary game-planning work and I knew he was helping out the opposition.

It’s already time to ask ourselves a big question: If Belichick reemerges onto the market in 2024–25 at the age of 72 going on 73 (with an April 16 birthday), is there a market?

We could be looking at the very real possibility of Don Shula’s all-time wins record (347) remaining safe. Though, Belichick, who has 333 victories, now has a Sean Payton year when he can travel, perhaps via the access he gets from a television network, and can more effectively plant some seeds. We cannot underestimate his ability to work his way into another coaching gig at some point.

Morris will return to the head coaching ranks for the first time since he served as the Buccaneers coach from 2009–11.

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Other notes from the Morris hiring fallout:

• While I did hear some rumblings about some coaches being unhappy with the tenor of certain interviews as it relates to the Rooney Rule and the requirement that each team interview two people of color, this has been a bounce-back year for minority representation in coaching. The Las Vegas Raiders (Antonio Pierce), Falcons (Morris), New England Patriots (Jerod Mayo) and Carolina Panthers (Dave Canales) all hired coaches who would qualify as Rooney Rule candidates. This is the healthiest the league’s head coaching ranks have looked from a diversity standpoint in a long time, and while there is a long way to go, we’re a far cry from some of the crisis years that boiled over around the time of the Brian Flores lawsuit.

• Speaking of Sean McVay’s defensive coordinator, you would certainly have to think Chris Shula, who has risen through the Rams’ organization (and is the grandson of all-time NFL great Don Shula) is the front-runner and that former Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley is in the conversation. Staley rose to prominence after a very short stint as the Rams’ defensive coordinator. McVay loved Staley so much the year that he hired him, that the interview process nearly came to a halt after the two spoke. I also think there’s a small but unlikely chance McVay thinks really big-picture given that the Rams are a Super Bowl contender in 2024. Wild cards are possible here.

• I think Raheem Morris will take Zac Robinson with him as offensive coordinator. Robinson, 37, has been the Rams’ pass-game coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the past two years. While it’s going to be difficult for McVay to again transition the team’s offensive room, retaining offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, pass game specialist Jake Peetz and tight ends coach Nick Caley (if Caley does not return to New England) as the core of that brain trust will leave the Rams on sound footing. I would keep an eye out for Aubrey Pleasant, the Rams’ defensive backs coach and defensive pass-game coordinator, as a defensive coordinator favorite for Morris in Atlanta.