Did Falcons' Arthur Blank want Bill Belichick over Raheem Morris?

One-time Most Valuable Player and current CBS Sports NFL analyst Boomer Esiason suggested during Monday's edition of the WFAN "Boomer and Gio" show that Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank hired Raheem Morris as the club's next head coach even though Blank preferred Bill Belichick over Morris.

"I was told yesterday, and I do believe it from the source that I got it from, that supposedly Arthur Blank was bought into Bill Belichick and could have offered him the job," Esiason explained, as shared by Jared Schwartz of the New York Post. "I don’t know why guys say no, but legitimately an NFL executive basically told me that they believe that Arthur Blank offered Bill the job. Now there may have been some caveats to that offer. You never know, it’s never, 'OK Bill, I want you, here’s a five-year contract, you do whatever you want.' I don’t think it was one of those."

NFL insiders and reporters previously mentioned that Belichick allegedly wanting to shake things up within the organization combined with the fact that he allowed legendary quarterback Tom Brady to leave the New England Patriots as a free agent following the 2019 season are among the reasons Blank chose Morris over the six-time Super Bowl champion head coach. 

Additionally, Esiason hinted that Belichick may take a year away from coaching to see if the New York Giants give him a call at some point before Super Bowl LIX in February 2025. 

Belichick collected his first two Super Bowl rings while working for the Giants from 1979 through the 1990 season.

"And just maybe he said, 'You know what? I don’t want to go right back in. I want a year away. I want to see what happens,' because as we know there will be about five or six job openings next year, and there may be a better situation where an owner says, 'You know what? I wanna go down this path with you and I want you to take my building over and I want you to run it the way that you ran it with the New England Patriots,'" Esiason said about Belichick's possible mindset. 

Per Josh Kendall of The Athletic, Falcons team president Greg Beadles said during Morris' introductory news conference on Monday that "coach Belichick was obviously a very serious candidate" for the Atlanta job. 

"You can’t have anything but respect for what he has done," Beadles added about Belichick. "At the end of the day, it was about what was the best fit for us."

Unless the Kansas City Chiefs need to find a replacement for Andy Reid as soon as next week, it seems Belichick will remain unattached to any club through all of 2024.