A four-game winning streak to end the season couldn't save the jobs of Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot.
Atlanta fired Morris and Fontenot on Sunday night following an 8-9 2025 campaign, the team announced. Morris went 16-18 in two seasons with the Falcons, while Fontenot went 37-48 in five years with zero playoff berths.
"I have great personal affinity for both Raheem and Terry and appreciate their hard work and dedication to the Falcons, but I believe we need new leadership in these roles moving forward," Falcons owner Arther Blank said in a statement on Sunday. "The decision to move away from people who represent the organization so well and have a shared commitment to the values that are important to the organization is not an easy one, but the results on the field have not met our expectations or those of our fans and leadership. I wish Raheem and Terry the absolute best in their future pursuits."
NFL Network Insiders Ian Rapoport, Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo initially reported Morris' and Fontenot's firings.
Blank announced further organizational changes on Monday morning. Falcons president Greg Beadles will be elevated to president and CEO, while Rich McKay will take on an expanded role within the organization, and Atlanta will hire a new president of football from outside the organization, Blank said in a letter to fans. Former MVP Matt Ryan is expected to be a top candidate for that job, Rapoport and Pelissero reported Monday.
Morris and Fontenot were both historical hires by the Falcons, becoming the organization's first Black full-time head coach and first Black general manager at the time of their hires, respectively. Fontenot, who began serving as GM for the 2021 season, oversaw Morris' return to the Atlanta sideline.
Morris took the Falcons head-coaching job having intimate knowledge of the club after serving as an interim head coach for much of the 2020 season following Dan Quinn's dismissal.
The Falcons went 4-7 with Morris filling in that year, but after the team opted for Arthur Smith as their next coach, Morris swapped coasts to become defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams, with whom he won Super Bowl LVI.
His excellence with the Rams led him back into the head-coaching conversation.
No longer a case of two ships passing in the night, the time was deemed right for the Falcons and Morris.
Unfortunately, a reunion did not lead to a return to contention. Rather, Atlanta missed the playoffs in both of the past two years, as it has every season since a Divisional Round loss in the 2017 campaign.
It's been an even more trying time during a larger window for Fontenot, who failed to put together a team with a winning record in any of his five seasons in control of the roster.
This year's downturn was especially painful, with plenty of promise showed in a 3-2 start before a five-game losing streak dashed all hope, only for the club to turn it on again once officially eliminated from the playoffs.
A month and a half into Morris' first offseason with Atlanta, he and Fontenot landed free-agent quarterback Kirk Cousins on a four-year mega-contract that was worth $180 million and included $100 million in guarantees. Another month and a half later, the Falcons used the No. 8 overall pick in 2024 draft on QB Michael Penix Jr., a shocking move that surprised even Cousins, who was coming off a torn Achilles but moved from Minnesota to Atlanta expecting to be the guy.
Cousins started the '24 season but seemed much diminished from his finer efforts with the Vikings, throwing for 3,508 yards, 18 touchdowns and 16 interceptions with an 88.6 passer rating. A large degree of his production came early on, too. He faded down the stretch, throwing zero touchdowns during a four-game losing streak as a 6-3 Falcons team dropped to 6-7. Following a poor performance in a Week 15 win, Cousins was replaced with Penix.
Penix was serviceable in the team's final three games of his rookie season, highlighted by a 312-yard, two-touchdown performance in the finale, providing optimism the Falcons could succeed moving forward with an accelerated QB succession plan. Better still, the 2024 Falcons under Morris finished 8-9, the organization's highest win total in six years.
Another jump in wins didn't follow, however. Penix showed flashes this season but his play was uneven and trended toward poor, and at the time he suffered a season-ending partially torn ACL he had lost four straight -- just as Cousins had at the end of his run as starter the year prior.
Cousins took back over in Week 12, and by Week 14 the Falcons were ousted from playoff contention, staring at an offseason that would require altered preparation for thanks to Penix's injury.
After two years, Atlanta's two roads to success under center instead amounted to double dead ends and identical 8-9 records.
The defense, too, proved a problem for much of Morris' tenure, a shortcoming made all the more glaring by it being his specialty.
In his first year, the Falcons finished 23rd in both points and yards allowed under then-defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake. The team was 22nd against the pass and gave up the second-most TDs through the air, largely because they generated such little pressure -- Atlanta finished 31st with 31 sacks.
Morris fired Lake and replaced him with Jeff Ulbrich. Improvement showed especially in the early portion of the season, a change partly brought about by a night-and-day difference in sacks thanks to a young, emerging core of James Pearce Jr., Brandon Dorlus and Jalon Walker. The Falcons finished with 57 (second in the NFL).
Defensive success diminished as the year progressed, mainly during Atlanta's aforementioned losing streak, leading to a unit that finished fairly average overall. It was an improvement from Morris' first year, but not to a degree that it prevented yet another midseason slump.
That was the story for much of the past couple of years.
Morris led the Falcons to some notable high points, but couldn't string together anything with enough consistency. On both sides of a Week 5 bye this season, Atlanta made statements -- first with a 34-27 win over the Commanders before the wheels fell off in Washington, and then with a 24-14 victory versus the Bills in which the defense was suffocating. The Falcons also closed the season on a four-game winning streak that included overcoming a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat to the Buccaneers in Week 15 and delivering a blow to Matthew Stafford's MVP chances while hounding the quarterback in a Week 17 upset over the Rams.
In between, it was largely another frustrating season for the Falcons, whose late-season resurgence was too little, too late and will now be on the search for their fourth different head coach this decade.
The pieces are certainly there to attract good coaching and front office candidates -- namely the aforementioned front-seven standouts, cornerback A.J. Terrell, running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Drake London. Many of them were added by Fontenot, even if he couldn't find the right equation for a winner. Questions still remain throughout much of the roster and at the all-important quarterback position, though. The team is also without a 2026 first-round pick after trading it to the Rams to select Pearce in the 2025 first round.
For a club now tied for its second-longest playoff drought in franchise history, results must accompany whatever answers the general manager-head coach duo brings.
