Raheem Morris – Two Super Bowls, One Complicated Head Coaching Record, and a Fresh Start in San Francisco
Raheem Morris has won two Super Bowls. His head coaching record across five seasons is 33–49. Both of those facts are true, and together they tell a more interesting story than either one does alone.
Born September 3, 1976, in Newark, New Jersey – raised in Irvington – Morris played safety at Hofstra University from 1994 to 1997, earned a degree in Physical Education, and immediately started coaching. No NFL playing career, no Power Five program. He began as a graduate assistant at Hofstra in 1998, moved to Cornell for a year as defensive backs coach, came back to Hofstra, interned with the Jets in 2001, and then got hired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002 as a defensive quality control coach. He was 25.
His first year in Tampa, the Buccaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII, beating the Oakland Raiders 48–21. That defense – the one Morris helped build as a quality control coach under Monte Kiffin – was the best in the league that year. He spent the next three years working up through defensive assistant and assistant defensive backs coach roles before leaving for Kansas State in 2006 to run the defense as coordinator under Ron Prince. The Wildcats upset the No. 4 Texas Longhorns that season. He was back in Tampa by 2007.
The Tampa Bay Years: 32 Years Old and Running an NFL Team
When Jon Gruden was fired after the 2008 season, the Buccaneers named Morris their head coach on January 16, 2009. He was 32, which made him one of the youngest head coaches in NFL history at the time. The first year was rough – 0–7 to start, 3–13 to finish, dead last in the NFC South. He fired defensive coordinator Jim Bates in November and took over play-calling himself mid-season, which tells you something about how hands-on Morris operates.
Year two was genuinely impressive. Tampa went 10–6 in 2010. That seven-game swing from year one to year two was the best single-season turnaround in Buccaneers franchise history. Morris also became the first coach since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to start at least ten rookies in a season and finish with a winning record. The team narrowly missed the playoffs on tiebreakers.
Then 2011 collapsed. The Buccaneers lost their final ten games, finished 4–12, and Morris was fired on January 2, 2012. Three seasons, 17–31 overall. It’s a record that looks worse without context and still underwhelming with it – but the 2010 campaign stands on its own as evidence that Morris could coach a team to play above expectations when the roster cooperated.
Washington, Atlanta (Part One), and Learning the Wide Receivers Position
The Washington Commanders hired him as secondary coach in January 2012. He spent three seasons there under Mike Shanahan and then Jay Gruden before Atlanta brought him in as assistant head coach and defensive backs coach in January 2015. The following year, his title shifted to assistant head coach and wide receivers coach – which is not a common transition. Switching from DB coach to WR coach is basically moving to the other side of every concept you’ve spent your career studying. Morris did it, coached that position for three seasons under Dan Quinn, and helped the Falcons reach Super Bowl LI in February 2017, where Atlanta lost to New England after holding a 28–3 lead in the third quarter.
In 2020, Quinn promoted him to defensive coordinator. The Falcons went 0–5, Quinn was fired on October 12, and Morris was named interim head coach with linebackers coach Jeff Ulbrich taking over the defense. Atlanta finished 4–7 under Morris as interim, 4–12 overall. He interviewed for the permanent job and didn’t get it – Arthur Smith was hired instead. Morris took that outcome and walked into one of the best situations available.
The Rams and Super Bowl LVI
Sean McVay hired him as defensive coordinator in January 2021 to replace Brandon Staley, who left to become the Chargers’ head coach. The Rams’ defense that year finished the regular season ranked fourth in scoring defense and posted the kind of pressure numbers that hold up in January. In Super Bowl LVI, Los Angeles beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20. Morris had his second ring.
What Kyle Shanahan later said about watching Morris run that defense is worth quoting directly. Shanahan told reporters in 2025 that going against Morris’s Rams defense in 2021 impressed him more than anything – that Morris took a scheme similar to what Staley had run, adapted it, “made it his own,” and added wrinkles Shanahan hadn’t seen before. Shanahan had actually tried to hire Morris when he took over the 49ers in 2017. The Falcons blocked it.
The Rams went 5–12 in 2022, returned to the playoffs at 10–7 in 2023. After three seasons in LA, Morris had the coordinator resume to command serious head coaching interest again.
Atlanta Falcons Head Coach: Two Seasons, Two 8–9 Records, Then Out
The Falcons hired Morris on January 25, 2024, after interviewing Bill Belichick, Jim Harbaugh, and Mike Vrabel. Atlanta finished 8–9 in 2024, second in the NFC South. Finished 8–9 again in 2025, second in the NFC South again. Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot were both fired on January 4, 2026.
The criticism that stuck was clock management – specifically a late-game meltdown in overtime against Washington that took Atlanta out of playoff contention. Fans called for his firing publicly and loudly after that one. Whether the clock management critique was fair or overblown depends on who you ask, but two consecutive 8–9 seasons in a division where 9–8 can win the title is a record that doesn’t survive front office patience.
The harder truth is that the Falcons as an organization have structural issues that predate and postdate Morris. He wasn’t handed a functional situation – and the front office firing both him and the GM simultaneously suggests the dysfunction ran deeper than one coach’s decision-making. His overall head coaching record now stands at 33–49 across five seasons. That’s a .402 winning percentage. It’s not good. It’s also not the whole picture of what Morris has done in the NFL.
San Francisco 49ers: What Morris Is Walking Into in 2026
Robert Saleh left to become the Tennessee Titans’ head coach after one season as 49ers defensive coordinator. Morris was hired in February 2026. He’s the fifth defensive coordinator San Francisco has had in five years – Saleh, DeMeco Ryans, Steve Wilks, Saleh again, now Morris. That’s either a sign of how the NFL churns through talent or a sign of how well this organization develops coordinators into head coaches, depending on how you want to read it.
The defense Morris is inheriting ranked 13th in scoring defense in 2025 (21.8 points per game) but 25th in defensive efficiency, 24th in defensive expected points added, and dead last in sacks with just 20. The pass rush was the worst in the league – 31st in pressures, 29th in pass rush win rate. Nick Bosa missed significant time. Mykel Williams, also returning from injury, adds another pass rusher. The 49ers also traded for Osa Odighizuwa at 3-technique and drafted Romello Height and Gracen Halton to address the defensive line depth.
Morris has been straightforward about his approach to scheme. He ran heavy five-man fronts in Atlanta – third-most in the league in both 2024 and 2025 – but says he plans to work primarily within the four-man front structure the 49ers have used under previous coordinators. “We’ve been a four-down rush team, and we’ve done a nice job with it,” Morris said in May 2026. The through-line of everything he’s said since being hired is personnel-first thinking: Fred Warner is Fred Warner, Bosa is Bosa, and the scheme adapts around what those players actually do well rather than forcing them into a predetermined structure.
What Morris’s Defense Actually Looks Like
The word Morris keeps coming back to is multiplicity. He wants fronts that don’t telegraph the coverage, coverages that don’t telegraph the front, and enough variety that opponents can’t settle into a rhythm studying tape. That sounds like every defensive coordinator’s stated goal, but Morris has actually run it at a championship level. The 2021 Rams defense was genuinely difficult to scheme against – not because it was exotic, but because it was disciplined and variable at the same time.
His background coaching defensive backs and then wide receivers gives him an unusual perspective on pass coverage. He spent three years literally coaching the routes that DBs are trying to defend. Whether that translates into something measurable is hard to say, but it’s a background almost no defensive coordinator in the league shares.
The honest version of his coordinator resume: one elite year in LA (2021), one down year (2022), one solid year (2023), two years at Atlanta where the defense was average to middling but the organizational context was complicated. At his best, he builds defenses that create chaos without losing discipline. At his worst, he’s watching an Atlanta offense squander leads while his defense holds.
The Reunion With Shanahan – Why It Matters More Than It Looks
Shanahan and Morris go back to the early Atlanta years, 2015 and 2016, when Shanahan was offensive coordinator for the Falcons. They’ve been in the same building, coached against each other, and clearly kept in close contact. Shanahan has said Morris was his first choice in 2017 when he took over the 49ers. The Falcons refused to release him from his contract.
That nine-year gap between when Shanahan first wanted Morris and when he finally got him is an odd footnote – not because it changes what Morris can do, but because it shows how long Shanahan has trusted his read on this specific person. John Lynch has also been cited by Morris as a draw. Morris coached Lynch briefly, and Lynch became one of the better-run front offices in football. Morris described the 49ers decision as an “easy choice,” and given that his alternative was sorting through whatever was left of the Falcons’ organizational wreckage, that’s not hard to believe.
The 49ers face Atlanta in Week 7 of the 2026 season. That game was already being circled before the schedule dropped.
Career Record, By the Numbers
As a head coach: 33 wins, 49 losses across the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2009–2011) and Atlanta Falcons (2024–2025), plus a 4–7 interim stint with Atlanta in 2020 that most reference databases count separately. His regular season win percentage as a permanent head coach sits at .402. He never coached a playoff game.
As a coordinator or assistant on championship teams: two Super Bowl rings. Super Bowl XXXVII with Tampa Bay as defensive quality control coach (2002), Super Bowl LVI with the Rams as defensive coordinator (2021). He was also on the coaching staff for the Falcons’ Super Bowl LI run in 2017, though that one didn’t end well.
The two-ring coordinator resume is what gets him hired. The 33–49 head coaching record is what every future employer looks at first and has to talk themselves past. Morris’s market value is genuinely high right now – the 49ers wanted him badly enough that Shanahan lobbied for him publicly – and his coordinator ceiling appears to be at or near the top of the league. Whether he gets another head coaching shot probably depends on what happens with Bosa, Warner, and a pass rush that needs to go from worst in the league to good enough to win in January.
Comments