The expectations might not be as lofty for Bucs coach Raheem Morris, Tomlin’s protege, who struggled to a 3-13 record in his first season at the helm. But Tomlin says he expects Morris to benefit from the experience he gained as a first-time head coach and be better for it in 2010.

“He’s capable,” Tomlin said during the AFC coaches breakfast at the NFL owners meetings. “I’ve been around him enough to know that. I think that’s why the Glazers hired him, and I trust he handled it appropriately.

“It’s like when we were talking about (a) second-year player. It’s a lap around the track. There are no elements of the journey that you’re not familiar with. I think the first year, you’ve got a vision of the journey. You’ve got a vision of the plan. After your first year, you’ve got tangible evidence as to why it works and why it doesn’t. That information can be quality information for you if you’re sharp. He is sharp, so I imagine he’ll be better in 2010.”

Broncos coach Josh McDaniels had more success in his first season at Denver. But a 6-0 start evaporated into an 8-8 record. McDaniels says he can commiserate with Morris on learning from first-year head coaching mistakes.

“I spoke with Raheem (Monday), actually,” McDaniels said. “You know, it’s the first year and that’s what we were both talking about. I think you know a lot more now than you did at this time last year about the team that you have — about your players, about your staff, about the process you want to go through, about some of the things that you wouldn’t do again and about some of the things you did and definitely want to do again.

“Raheem went through some changes with his staff. We obviously had some changes with our staff as well. I can tell in his words that he feels more comfortable with what he’s doing, with who’s there around him, with what he knows about the team and everything else. … I know my team better. I know my players better. I know the way they’re going to react. I know my staff better. And those are the things that will allow my staff and my players to make those adjustments a lot quicker.”

November 24th, 2009 changed all that. As you know, Morris had aspirations of changing the defensive scheme. The one thing that had been associated with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the last 15 years is now being stripped in favor of a more aggressive, attacking defense. To say the least, not a popular move in Tampa. Also, a move not really understood, considering Morris is knee-deep in the Tampa Two defensive system. But, Morris wanted change, and he was able to get Jim Bates on board to oversee this change. While Bates may not have had great success as a head coach, you can’t take away his defensive knowledge.

But things started bad and never got better for Tampa. The departed Brooks and Cato June, thought too small for the system, were never properly replaced. The Bucs were runners-up in the Albert Haynesworth sweepstakes, another setback. As Tampa Bay entered training camp, its core of defensive players were the same as the ones from last year, minus one leader, but the system was new.

And boy, did the system fail these guys. After two seasons of Pro-Bowl caliber play, Barrett Ruud looked extremely out of place. Whatever opponents wanted to do, they did. Some teams passed on the Bucs, like the Cowboys, others ran on the Bucs, most notably Carolina. On November 22nd, the Saints plastered 38 points on Tampa, and it looked like if New Orleans really felt like it, they could have scored 58. It was the fifth time in ten games a team scored more than thirty points on the Bucs, not to mention the two times they gave up 28 and the mere 24 the Giants handed them.

Enough was enough, and here is where the credit begins. Raheem Morris, not content to stand idly by as the season, already lost, plunges into complete mayhem, realized his plan was failing, but also knew that his players know what they’re doing, if they’re given the right job. So, Raheem decided it was time to let the boys play the way they know how, re-implemented the Tampa Two, and demoted Bates to advisor. Since Morris has much more experience running this system, he smartly dubbed himself the defensive coordinator for the rest of the season.

Tampa Bay has now played five games since the switch. During that time, they’ve given up an average of 17.2 point per game. Compare that to the 29.4 points the defense gave up per game through the first ten games. In those ten games, the defense was allowing teams to rack up 378 yards per game. Since the switch, the number is 333, knocking off 45 yards per game. Given today’s statistics, the Bucs have improved from 29th to 16th in total team defense, and from 31st to 6th in scoring defense. They’ve also had much better results in their re-matches with the Panthers and Saints. And most importantly, the Bucs have won, then won again, taking the NFC’s best team down a notch in the process.

Credit the players for playing with more enthusiasm and urgency, but credit Raheem Morris for realizing his mistakes and putting his players in position to succeed again. Question becomes, is it enough to save his job, and what are his defensive plans for next year? I think Morris has done enough in the second half of the season to warrant keeping him around. Hopefully he’ll stick with the Tampa Two from the beginning this time around. Who’ll be the coordinator? Well, I think Chicago may be making a coaching change, leaving candidates with Tampa connections, Lovie Smith and Rod Marinelli. Either should make a nice hire

“There just wasn’t a knot in my stomach,” Raheem Morris said.

Also, the visitors to his house didn’t look miserable. And there were dozens of text messages congratulating the rookie for his first NFL win, like one from Derrick Brooks. Warren Sapp phoned. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin checked in. Morris began texting people at 4 in the morning Monday.

“Some of them were good friends from home, some were good friends from college,” Morris said. “Mom and Dad were here, so they were next to me.”

The first one always matters – this one even a little more.

Yes, the Bucs are 1-7. Who knows, maybe they’ll will work themselves into a win-crazy fever – and finish 4-12. But this team, this franchise – this coach – desperately needed a win, one win.

Losing threatened to become a crushing weight.

“It was getting to the point where you can’t help but start to talk about that 0-and-something,” Bucs linebacker Barrett Ruud said. “Winning Sunday wasn’t so much excitement. It was more like, ‘Finally.’”

Finally, there will be no more 0-16 talk. You have to start somewhere. Think Raheem Morris didn’t need this? Monday morning came and, on the wings of a new young quarterback, it was a new story.

“You started to see the team become a team …” Morris said.

Later, he said, “Today nobody is talking about pressure, about who’s getting the ball, about who’s a bust, who’s got to go.”

Morris smiled.

“You learn from adversity, you learn how to deal with it, learn how to be a man about it.”

He thought about those seven losses.

“Losing doesn’t build character, it reveals character.”

He flashed another winning grin.

“But everything else about losing sucks.”

If the man deserves criticism for the crazed start to his head coaching tenure (he’s on his second offensive coordinator and third quarterback – even his third kicker) then he deserves some credit for hanging in there. His young team grew a little Sunday. Maybe, just maybe, its coach has grown, too.

“I learn something new every day,” Morris said. “I write something down differently every day, what I do, how I do it, how I plan. I’m having fun with it. It’s a great job. This job is built for men who are ready to deal with pressure and I think I’m ready to do that. I’ve done it all my life. That’s who I am.”

There is a learning curve, and maybe Morris is beginning to climb it. Maybe it’s made up of little things – like dispensing with the rap music during stretching during practices, or instituting a game day dress code after a few of his players missed curfew. Little things that maybe make this young team pay more attention – and make Coach Rah more of a Coach Morris.

“Make them come to the game and look the right way,” Morris said. “Make them look like winners. Maybe (Sunday) the dress code changed everything.”

OK, maybe it’s grasping at straws. Dress codes? Look, you can wear wedding dresses, but the key is winning.

That said, there’s a mountain of work left for the head coach. He’s still all over the road. And there is still a perception that he has his favorites in the locker room, which doesn’t sit well with everyone inside it.

But Sunday was large. Now, 0-16 is off the table. Who knows what would have happened to this team, to Morris, if the losing went on, even one week more.

The best thing that could have happened just happened. The Bucs won and the Bucs quarterback, hand-picked by Morris, looked like a leader. So did Morris on fourth-and-go for it. So 0-16 is gone.

So is that knot in the stomach, at least on Monday.

You have to start somewhere. Maybe this head coach just did.

Source: Tampa Bay Online

You think a losing streak is hard on you? Try reliving each loss a dozen times over in your head. Try enjoying dinner on a Sunday evening as your mind races from the week’s preparation to the day’s game plan to the dawn’s postmortem.

He is an optimistic man, this head coach of the Buccaneers. Naturally upbeat, and forever confident. Yet even he is not immune from the doubts that arrive in the quiet of the night.

“After a loss, you sit there and mull over what you could have done differently,” Morris said Monday afternoon in a hallway at One Buc Place. “I don’t really like to play the blame game, so most of the time I’m judging myself. What I could have done differently, or how I might have failed to prepare the team. I beat myself up first. I can’t go to sleep. I don’t get much sleep at all, after a loss.”

Morris pauses for a moment then breaks into a grin.

“Last night? I was toes-up by 9:30.”

The second-longest losing streak in Tampa Bay history ended Sunday and, for a moment, so did the criticism of Morris. The landscape still has not changed. The Bucs are still mostly woeful, and Morris is still mostly unproven.

But, for a week or so, there will be a reprieve. A chance to step back and consider the larger picture. To contemplate the idea that a roster had to be remade and that losing would be the inevitable result.

The key is to recognize that Morris is not the coach he was eight weeks ago and is not the coach he will be eight weeks from now. The Glazer family took a risk when it hired a head coach based on his potential rather than his resume. So, in much the same way that Josh Freeman is beginning to learn what it takes to be a quarterback in the NFL, Morris is learning about being a head coach.

“He said coming in, ‘Hey, I’m not totally prepared for this, either. I’m going to learn as I go.’ And I’m proud of the way he has grown as a coach,” linebacker Barrett Ruud said. “He’s improved just like we’re trying to improve. You can see it. Pretty much all the moves he’s made have been in the right direction.”

It has gone largely unnoticed outside the walls of a locker room or beyond the fences of a practice field, but Morris has grown more strict in recent weeks. He has abandoned the odd idea of music at practice. He has tightened the dress code at games. He has stopped calling players out publicly after less-than-hoped-for results with Gaines Adams.

“I think we had a vision of this team being young and loose and responsible. But our play on the field showed we weren’t, so he made some little changes,” cornerback Ronde Barber said. “If it’s got to be a business, it’s got to be a business. And that’s a good thing.”

For his part, Morris does not like to look at all of the changes as a shift in philosophy. They are merely adaptations for the moment. And the music and blue jeans may one day return if the team shows some responsibility on the field.

Still, he admits he has grown as a head coach and expects the learning curve to continue.

“I’m 33 years old; I’ve never been a head coach before. There is no manual for being a head coach. I’m kind of formulating it as I go,” Morris said. “I have a lot of people in place to help me, a lot of people I trust. A Doug Williams, a Mark Dominik, a Jim Bates, a Greg Olson. All different walks of life, some young, some old; it’s a beautiful mixture. You just have to be willing to listen.

“So I don’t know that I would call it change. It’s a natural progression in life.”

It is a progression that has been seen many times before. Washington had a first-year coach go 0-5 in 1981. Dallas went 0-11-1 for a rookie coach in 1960 and 0-8 for a college coach in 1989. The Bucs were 0-5 in a coach’s debut season in 1996. Kansas City started 2-10 for a CFL refugee in 1978. Somehow, Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson, Tony Dungy and Marv Levy recovered.

In no way is that meant to compare Morris to a group of Hall of Fame and Super Bowl coaches. It is simply to point out that a career should not necessarily be judged in its infancy.

Morris, like his team, has to get better. He has to find the balance between being a friend and a leader. He has to be a better evaluator of talent and character. He has to make better choices on gameday and be a little less carefree the rest of the week.

Still, the Glazers hired Morris for a reason. They saw something special in a largely anonymous assistant, and, based on their track record with Dungy and Jon Gruden, you may want to stick around for the results.

“I’ve got to be myself. If I was Bill Parcells, I would be (a different) coach,” Morris said. “I’m Raheem Morris. If I’m coming in here trying to imitate Coach Dungy or Coach Gruden, that wouldn’t be what this team needed, or what it respected or what it wants.

“If I was on the outside, I would question me, too. I’m 33 years old with a young football team and we’re 1-7. That’s the small picture. Until you look inside and evaluate what’s going on and how the changes are coming. And I feel good about that. Because the way we want to go is the direction this organization is heading.”

And does Morris realize how many people believe he is in over his head?

“Of course,” he said, smiling. “That’s great. It’s only going to make it sweeter at the end.”

Source: St Petersburg Times

From the outset of his term here Morris promised to take a very direct no-holds-barred approach to this gig and he proved during the first week of his first training camp that he wasn’t kidding.

From what he expects of defensive end Gaines Adams to what he saw of the Bucs’ play in their most recent tilts with Carolina, Morris has given it to his players as straight and direct as maybe anyone ever has.

The best part, though, is that he has shared many of the same messages with the media, which in turn has given Bucs fans a window into what life inside the Bucs’ locker room is like under Morris.

With that in mind, here is brief look back at the first week of Morris’ first camp and a review of some of the highlights derived from the first stop on his personal “Straight Talk Express.”

On what he needs to see out of Adams this year:
“Double-digit sacks. That is what he’s going to be graded on. There’s no secret about it and I have no problem telling Gaines, ‘Hey Gaines, if you don’t do it this year, then you are going to be considered a bust.’ ”

On running back Cadillac Williams:
“He runs angry, he trains angry, he practices angry, he walks down the hallway angry, eats lunch angry. That’s who he is. And he smiles at you guys [the media]. There better be a place here for Cadillac.”

On tight end Kellen Winslow:
“He’s developing his core, getting used to this weather. I see him with his mouth open a little bit. That’s an athlete getting a little tired from running around in his pads. So he’s got to get back to his [University of Miami] form, when he was down here playing in it all the time. He went up to Cleveland and he got fat. Not literally, but he got fat.”

On handling defensive backs:
“I’ve been there before; remember I coached the DBs, and I’ve been there when they’ve been beat. We come to the sideline, I walk away from them, they walk away from me. I look at the pictures. I find out what we need to do and I go over there and we correct. I may look at somebody and say take the skirt off, let’s go, but they know what I mean.”

On how safety-turned-linebacker Jermaine Phillips looks so far:
“We’re not going to know until he gets some true live bullets. We had a little bit today, but Tennessee’s coming. What you’ve got to see is how he does when he’s got that same pulling guard coming at him once again he’s got to step in there and hit him. That’s when we’ll see.”

On defensive tackle Ryan Sims:
“When Ryan Sims is not in there we are not going to be as good at stopping the run. Just can’t do it. Let’s not kid ourselves. He has his role and if he’s not our Michael Jordan on first-and-10 when it’s going to be a downhill powerful run, then we’ve got issues.”

On the play of the offense just two days into camp:
“Today our offensive tempo was just not up to par. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it coming out of the huddle, I didn’t like it coming up to the ball up front. I didn’t like the procedure from the quarterback to the team. Nothing.

“It’s easy to run around in shorts and in a stadium with the lights on and catch passes when you know you’re not going to get hit. So the last six plays of that period I said, ‘Let’s strap it up and go live.’ Those guys didn’t want to [set] the tempo, so I did.”

On rookie quarterback Josh Freeman:
“He threw one interception after the receiver ran the wrong route. You just can’t do that. He runs the wrong route there’s no reason to throw it to him. Don’t reward a guy who runs a wrong route by throwing it to him.”

On cornerback Elbert Mack:
“He had to be the camper of the day today. Any time you walk away with two interceptions, that’s you. But that’s how he has to be. He’s got to be the microwave. He’s got to go into the game on third down and stand up, because everybody’s looking at him. Oh, here’s the sub; throw it at the sub. It’s always going to be that way.”

After all, the guy had only been in the NFL for a few seasons, and he had spent most of that time coaching defensive backs. What made anyone think he was the guy to recharge a franchise that had won a championship only a few seasons earlier?

As it turns out, the guy’s name was Don Shula. Looking back, yeah, he was old enough.

A generation later, there was another young coach. He, too, had his work cut out for him. Anyone could see that.

Still, he was young, he was bright and, at the time, he seemed like a logical enough choice to develop a young quarter back. Why shouldn’t a franchise take a chance?

Turns out, that guy was David Shula. In hindsight, perhaps he could have used a bit more preparation.

That’s the thing when it comes to young coaches in the NFL.

It’s hard to know exactly when they’re ripe. As a society, we seem to prefer young to old in most things. But when it comes to our surgeons, our pilots and our head football coaches, most of us seem to prefer a little salt in the beard, thank you very much.

And now that you asked, yes, Raheem Morris is still just 32.

Maybe you heard about it.

This coming week, when Morris leads his Bucs into training camp, his age will again be a question that follows behind. In his six months on the job, Morris has been asked a thousand times whether he is ready, but let’s face it, until the league starts keeping score, there is no sufficient answer.

After all, Morris is the fourth-youngest head coach in NFL history. His experience is limited — he was a defensive coordinator for about 11 minutes before being promoted to head coach. For crying out loud, there are Backstreet Boys who are older.

So can a coach be too young?

“I don’t think age is a factor,” said Mark Dominik, the Bucs’ general manager. “If you’re listing the top 10 reasons why coaches don’t succeed, I don’t think age is among the top 10. Mike Tomlin is having success as a young coach, and Dick Vermeil had success as an older coach.”

Here’s my gut feeling: If Morris fails, it won’t be because of his birth certificate. If he fails, it will more likely be because the owners weren’t committed enough, or the front office wasn’t smart enough, or the quarterback wasn’t special enough, or the defense wasn’t strong enough. Like most first-year coaches, Morris has some things to prove, but the rest of the Tampa Bay franchise has bigger questions to answer than he does.

For the record, the four youngest men who have coached in an NFL game all struggled. Together, Lane Kiffin of the Raiders, Harland Svare of the Rams, John Michelosen of the Steelers and David Shula of the Bengals had one winning season in 17. That’s hardly an endorsement for a youth movement.

Ah, but if you look at John Madden of the Raiders, Don Shula of the Colts and Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin of the Steelers — all only a bit older than Morris when hired — and you see a fistful of Super Bowl rings.

So do a few months make that much of a difference in a coach’s maturity?

Or, perhaps, are other factors at work?

The answer is obvious. As much as we like to talk about head coaches, the NFL is a place where the solid organizations usually win. That has never changed.

Think of how solid the Raiders were, for instance, when Madden took over. The previous two seasons, they had won 25 games. And in his 10 years of coaching, Madden’s quarterbacks were Daryle Lamonica and Ken Stabler.

Don Shula? The Colts had become a .500 team over the three seasons before his arrival, but they still had Johnny Unitas, Ray Berry and John Mackey. Shula won more games than anyone, partially because he had more Hall of Fame quarterbacks (Unitas, Bob Griese and Dan Marino).

Cowher and Tomlin? Much of their success is because the Pittsburgh organization has become one of the most successful in the NFL.

On the other hand, a bad organization can chew up a young coach in a hurry. The Raiders were bad when Kiffin came, and they were bad when he left. The Bengals were awful with or without David Shula.

Were they too young? Looking back, maybe neither Kiffin nor Shula were old enough to know they should wait for a better offer.

Often, those coaches get stuck with a high-priced rookie quarterback and their time runs out while the quarterback tries to grow up. Kiffin had JaMarcus Russell. David Shula had David Klingler. Even Svare had Terry Baker, the former Heisman winner who flopped in the NFL.

So what does this say about Morris? Is he closer to Don Shula’s situation or to David’s? Are the Bucs closer to the Raiders who were taken over by Madden or those taken over by Kiffin? The truth is probably somewhere in between. The Bucs weren’t in the same disarray as the recent Raiders or the old Bengals, but they don’t have a lot of Hall of Famers roaming the halls, either.

Morris does have some disadvantages. He, too, has a No. 1 draft choice at quarterback. The front office has some proving to do, too. There are questions about the owners.

Is Morris too young?

Put it this way: If things don’t work, he’s going to get old in a hurry.

NFL’s all-time youngest coaches

Coach Team Age when hired Record

Lane Kiffin Raiders 31 years, 8 months 5-15

Harland Svare Rams 31 years, 11 months 21-48-5 *

John Michelosen Steelers 32 years, 2 months 20-26-2

Raheem Morris Bucs 32 years, 4 months —

David Shula Bengals 32 years, 7 months 19-52

Josh McDaniels Broncos 32 years, 8 months —

John Madden Raiders 32 years, 10 months 103-32-7

Don Shula Colts 33 years, 0 months 328-156-6 *

Al Davis Raiders 33 years, 6 months 23-16-3

Joe Collier Bills 33 years, 7 months 13-16-1

Bob Snyder Rams 33 years, 11 months 6-6

Jim Trimble Eagles 34 years, 3 months 25-20-3

Jon Gruden Raiders 34 years, 5 months 95-81 *

Bill Cowher Steelers 34 years, 8 months 149-90-1

Joe Kuharich Cardinals 34 years, 8 months 58-81-3 *

Norm Van Brocklin Vikings 34 years, 10 months 66-100-7 *

Mike Tomlin Steelers 34 years, 10 months 22-10

Joe Schmidt Lions 34 years, 11 months 43-34-7

Eric Mangini Jets 34 years, 11 months 23-25

Mike Shanahan Raiders 35 years, 6 months 146-98 *

* Record includes stints with other teams

The plan was to push as many fans as possible through the autograph station during the allotted two hours. But after about 30 minutes, the snaking line had slowed to a snail-like crawl.

The problem wasn’t the fans.

The problem was Morris.

No sooner had Hollingsworth asked fans to limit their autograph requests to a single item than Morris pulled someone’s hat off and signed it, along with a football or picture.

No sooner had Hollingsworth asked fans to refrain from posing for pictures with Morris, than Morris jumped out of his seat, threw his arm around someone and flashed a smile for a waiting camera.

Standing a few feet away, Bucs co-chairman Joel Glazer smiled. Moments like those were part of what the Bucs were looking for when they made the 32-year-old Morris the youngest head coach in the National Football League.

Morris, a defensive assistant for the Bucs the previous two seasons, had only recently been promoted to replace defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin when he was again promoted in January to replace Super Bowl-winning head coach Jon Gruden.

More victories and an eye toward the future is what the Bucs ownership wanted first and foremost from their new coach; but someone who could connect with fans also was on their wish list.

“I don’t want to be some mythical figure that no one ever sees,” Morris said. “I’m a head coach now, but I still want to be the same person I’ve always been — a guy you can touch, a guy you can talk to, a guy you can get to know.”

The chance to get to know Morris could come just about any place and time in the Bay area. Though he says he doesn’t close the place the way he used to, he’s still a regular at the Blue Martini at International Plaza. And the man who sat with students at a Jesuit-Tampa Catholic boys basketball game just two weeks after being named Bucs coach has no plans to give up his habit of attending prep and college sporting events.

“I love being at those types of events,” Morris said. “It’s nice to be a fan; nice to see the people. And sometimes, in a setting like that, you can motivate people.”

Morris isn’t likely to motivate too many while shopping for groceries, but there’s a good chance fans will run into him while doing that, too.

“Oh yeah, you’ll see him at the supermarket,” said Wayne Weaver, a former college teammate who shared a suite with Morris while both attended Hofstra University. “He’ll be there pushing the cart, because that’s who he is.

“He’s just a normal guy. He’s very outgoing and charismatic, but he’s genuine and honest, too. And I promise you he won’t let this position go to his head. He won’t let it change who he is.”

Culture shift

But atmospheres around him are changing. At One Buc Place, for example, several employees say the workday atmosphere is more relaxed than in years past. Many credit Morris for that.

One day, Morris walked in on a business department staff meeting, introduced himself and signed autographs for and took pictures with every staff member.

“That’s never happened before,” said Hollingsworth, an accountant. “Even though I’m a numbers guy, he’s made me and everyone here feel like we belong.”

The culture at One Buc Place has changed. That’s great for the people who work at One Buc Place.

But what about the people the people at One Buc Place work for? What about the fans?

Their bottom line will always be reflected in the standings, so Morris’ goodwill and congenial personality won’t keep him in good standing for long if he can’t consistently win football games.

On that front, Morris has plenty of doubters. With a handful of seasons as a secondary coach under his belt, Morris is too young and inexperienced to win regularly in his first season, critics charge.

Baloney, the Bucs’ owners say. The trend throughout the league, they say, is to have a young head coach, and Morris’ personality is part of what can make him not only special but also highly successful.

“The game has changed a lot the last few years,” Glazer said. “The players have changed, and the way coaches relate to those players has changed. We believe Raheem can relate to today’s player.”

Morris explained how during his introductory news conference, saying players will “give me a dap [fist bump] instead of a, ‘How you doing, Coach?’” and that he’ll respond by giving them “a chest bump instead of a that-a-boy.”

Even before he was named head coach, Morris impressed players.

“Football-wise, he’s got a great understanding of fundamentals and situational play,” linebacker Barrett Ruud said. “I really think his ability to understand situational football is what’s exceptional about him.”

Morris also has an aura that makes players want to follow him and trust what he says.

“From the day I met him I could see he was a leader, not a follower,” said Lance Schulters, a former NFL defensive back who played with Morris at Hofstra. “From Day One [in college] he took me under his wing. Even then he thought he was a coach. He made all the calls and corrected me on everything. That’s why I’m not surprised he’s a head coach.”

‘No reason to change’

Pin him down, and Morris will admit to being a little surprised by his appointment. Sure, he had his career path mapped out, but never expected to reach this stage this early. Now that he has, though, he intends to treat the 53 players he will face every day during the season the same way he treated the eight or nine he worked with as the team’s defensive backs coach.

“Hey, that’s what got me here,” Morris said of his straight-talking style. “There’s no reason to change that.”

At FanFest, Hollingsworth could only shake his head and chuckle. A few minutes after he asked fans, yet again, to refrain from handing their babies to Morris, there was Morris, reaching across the table to grab a baby out of a willing mother’s arms as the proud father captured the moment on video.

“He’s just awesome,” autograph seeker Samantha Kroll, 24, said. “He’s like a cuddly bear.”

“Yeah, I’m a little different,” Morris said. “Not every coach in the league is like I am. But that’s how I am and that’s how I’m going to be. I think the fans are getting used to it.”

He stood in a puddle on a broken piece of track, looking out at the ragged football field of his youth. The sky was as gray as a bruise, and the rain beat against his umbrella in a steady hum. Over his shoulder, there was a scoreboard.

This is where Raheem Morris grew up. This is where he made a few plays, and where he let a few slip away. Out there among the weeds and the clover, on a field jokingly referred to as “astrodirt,” is where he made his closest friends, where he forged his fondest memories, where he shaped his personality.

Morris looked through the raindrops at Matthews Field, home of the Irvington High Blue Knights, and it was as if the years melted away. There was the spot where he caught a hitch pass against Westfield, then reversed his field and ran downfield for a touchdown. Over there was where he gave up the deep touchdown pass to Elizabeth High in his junior season. To his left are the metal stands where he spent his sophomore season after his parents pulled him from the team because of grades.

It was June 5, Raheem Morris Day. This was his place, and these were his people.

And if you want to get to know Raheem Morris, the new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this is where you begin.

So far, Tampa Bay doesn’t know a lot about Morris. Yes, his players like him. Yes, he has some charisma. No, he isn’t Jon Gruden. Except for that, however, Morris remains a mystery.

So who is Raheem Morris? And what made him that way?

The answer is in Irvington.

And to this day, much of Irvington is still in Morris.

It is a hard place, Irvington, a community of some 60,000 people not far from the runways of Newark International Airport.

Crime is high here, some eight times the average of the rest of New Jersey. There are empty, decaying buildings throughout town. These days, no one refers to it as the hometown of Jerry Lewis or Queen Latifah. These days, it is, as The New York Times once called it, “the place that prosperity forgot.”

The metal detector at the entrance suggests that Irvington High, too, has had its problems. In 2008, New Jersey Magazine ranked it 307th of the 316 high schools in the state. That was an improvement. Two years earlier, Irvington had been 316th, dead last.

To Morris, however, Irvington represented a better life when his family moved there when he was in the third grade. He had been born in nearby Newark, a town with its own problems.

“This was a chance to have a house, to have a better life,” Morris says. “When we came to Irvington, we were moving up.”

A town such as this can give a man strength. It can teach him loyalty. It can make him tougher. It can make him competitive. Irvington gave all of that to Morris. It is in his DNA.

“This town is all over him,” says Bam Richardson, a lifelong friend who is now Irvington’s basketball coach. “Everyone knows Irvington is a tough town. It’s a place that can make you, or it can break you. It’s a cliche, but only the strong survive. If you’re strong, you can go far. But if you’re not, you can wake up in somebody’s jail or in a predicament you can’t get out.

“Raheem and I, we still carry that Irvington edge. We have that Irvington swagger.”

Morris may need it in the NFL. So far, he admits, his resume has more questions than answers. People are waiting to judge him, and they won’t wait long.

“He’s going to do well,” said Kyle Steele, a teammate of Morris from his days in Pop Warner through those at Hofstra University. “I don’t think the reason why is football-related. NFL coaches all know football. But Raheem has something that makes the next person believe he can do something. He has a way of bringing up the people around him.

“By the time he leaves, people are going to love him. They love Tony Dungy because he’s so honorable. They’re going to love Raheem because he’s so likeable.”

THE PATH BACK HOME

To a man coming home, the streets always look the same.

Morris sits in the passenger seat of a blue rental car, retracing his mile-and-a-half walk home from school. He would cut over to Crescent Lake, the housing project where Bam and Moossey lived. He would keep going past the graveyard and over the bridge. Then a quick left and a right, and he was on Osborne Street.

It is a good street, with two-story houses pressed closely together and small, neat lawns. There is a faded yellow wall up the street, where the kids played wall ball, and an ATM that is in disrepair.

These days, Morris wears a tattoo on his left arm that says “Osb” in memory of those days on Osborne. When the family first moved in, he would spend his days on the stoop, watching the kids of the neighborhood play football. One day, they needed another player to make the teams even, and Morris joined in.

The games went from telephone pole to telephone pole, or from manhole cover to manhole cover. Morris points to a street corner where his pass pattern one day was interrupted by a parked car. That cost him a chipped tooth.

Morris laughs when he tells the story. That, too, is something he took from Irvington, After all this time, he can still smile at the pain.

He could have gotten lost on these streets. Some people do. A childhood friend, Dwayne Youman, was shot and killed a half block away.

“A town like this will teach you to make the right decisions,” Morris said. “It’s easy to get into trouble and it’s hard to get out. You can get into whatever you want to get into.”

So how did Morris succeed?

“I don’t feel like I had a chance to lose,” Morris said. “No matter how the odds are stacked against you, no matter what people think. That’s why I had the ability to come out of Irvington.”

Childhood Interests

Morris stands in the dining room of his grandmother Lillian’s house, flipping through old photo albums and cackling at the images of another time.

For most of his childhood, he lived here, along with his mother and an aunt and uncles. He shared a upstairs bedroom his cousin Quadir. There was a poster of Magic Johnson on the wall, another one of George Gervin.

He loved the Cowboys and the Lakers and The Cosby Show and pretzels and animals. His first job was as a caddy. His second job was at McDonald’s. His first girlfriend was named Cherise.

Morris tells the stories quickly, the way he talks, like a runner in the open field. Finally, he gets the most important one of them all: The one about the Lost Year.

If you want to know, yeah, it still kind of stings.

Morris was a sophomore, and by his own admission, he was skating his way through school. There was a system at Irvington. If you were there for homeroom, no one paid much attention to you the rest of the day. So he would go to homeroom, then he would slip away and go to a friend’s house and spend the day playing video games.

Sure enough, his grades began to slip. Nothing horrible, mind you, but suddenly, he wasn’t making the grades he had made before. His parents weren’t going to put up with it. They pulled him from the Irvington football team.

“He came home with a C,” said Hilton Vaughn, Morris’ father. “I asked him ‘What are you going to do when they let the air out of the ball?’ ”

Looking back, Morris says “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I came back and I got a 3.0. I never would have gotten that without them taking away something I loved.”

That’s what Morris says now. What he said then was, well, angrier. Even now, he and his mother, Valerie, go back and forth about it.

“I was (ticked),” Morris said. “No one understood. I didn’t at the time.”

“No, you didn’t,” Valerie says.

“I was still eligible,” Raheem says.

“See! Eligible for who?” Valerie said.

Raheem laughs. At 15, however, he wasn’t very happy. His friends kept telling him his parents would change their minds, but they did not. For a season, he sat in the stands and fumed.

On Sunday afternoons, however, he kept stats for his old Pop Warner team. He started following around Ralph Steele, his old coach, and asking questions about play-calling. That was 1989, the year the Raiders made Art Shell the first African-American coach in the NFL in 61 years.

It was also the year Morris started to think about coaching.

SPECIAL SUPPORT

Not far away, the boxes are stacked in the living room of Valerie Morris’ second-floor apartment. She is moving to Tampa to watch her son coach. Of course she is.

Raheem Morris was born on Sept. 3, 1976, nine days before the Bucs played their first game. His father and mother would not marry until his sophomore year of college.

Still, both parents were always around. At one point, his father worked three jobs, went to school at Lincoln Tech and helped coach the Golden Knights (the Pop Warner team). Eventually, he became a mechanic with New Jersey Transit.

“For about two years, he was a zombie,” Morris said. “I learned my work ethic from him. He always had great energy.”

From his mother, a clerk at Macy’s for years, Raheem learned dependability.

“She was a rock,” he said. “She made me know I could be better than I thought.”

In 2002, his first year with the Bucs, Raheem bought his mother her first car. Recently, he finally convinced his father to retire. When it comes to saying thanks, a man does what he can.

“I don’t have any stories of looking for food,” Raheem said, “because my parents always got it done.”

The days, the walls of Valerie’s apartment walls are a testament to her only child. There is a photo of Raheem in an Irvington uniform, of him in a Hofstra uniform, of him with his high school prom date.

Nearby, on a book case, there a baseball cap with “Obama” on the front. Not far away is a flag with the emblem of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

It is a changing world, is it not?

REMEMBERING RAHEEM

His old friends have him surrounded. From every possible direction, people are throwing memories at Morris.

He stands in the middle of the Irvington High auditorium, moments after the proclamations and the presentations that come with a having your own day. His friends are telling the same stories and laughing at the same memories. It is easy to feel the regard they have for him.

There is a particular sound to the laughter of old friends. There is no bond, no comfort level, that goes quite as deep as with those who watched you grow up. Even in the middle of his homecoming, he is still Raheem, and he is going to take his grief.

For instance, there is the play against Elizabeth, which has been debated a thousand times without resolution. Bam Robinson was playing safety. Morris was playing corner. The tight end and receiver both went long, and Morris was beaten for a touchdown.

To this day, Raheem argues that Bam should have called “ball” to help him out. To this day, Bam argues back. For 16 years, the debate has continued.

“I’m right and he’s wrong,” Robinson says. And both men howl.

Morris was a good player. Ex-teammate Kyle Steele says that if Raheem had been the quarterback, the Blue Knights would have won the state title when he was a senior.

Even now, they talk about how Raheem ran in his years in Pop Warner, how his head would roll back until his eyes were looking at the sky, and how his knees and arms would pump, and how his braces would flash from inside his facemask.

There was a play, former Pop Warner coach Ralph Steele (Kyle’s father) remembers, called Fake 25, 44 Bootleg. Eventually, it was shorted to “Touchdown on two,” because Morris would always score on it. The first touchdown ever for the Irvington Pop Warner team? It was a 70-yard run by Morris.

“He was just as charismatic now as he was then,” Ralph said. “Even then, you could tell he was a leader.”

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

How did Morris get out of Irvington High? Some days, he fought his way out.

By the time Morris was a senior in high school, there were problems between the Haitian immigrants and African-American football players. Almost every day, there was a fist fight. Some of those days, Raheem was involved.

“It was a fight-for-survival world,” Morris said. “You had your friends and they had their friends, and it was either fight or get beat up. We didn’t have gangs. That was before they called them gangs.”

On the peaceful days, Morris and his friends would linger on the corner, or at the bridge, or they would make their way down to Tasty’s Chicken Shack. They would listen to Jay-Z or Tupac. They would argue about sports and talk about girls. They called themselves the P.Y.T.’s, after the Michael Jackson song. The Pretty Young Things.

He was Ra-Dog. Or Scoop.

“He has this round hook in the back of his head,” said Kyle Steele. “Look at him. He looks like Snoopy.”

Once, Kyle tells you, he and Morris were walking toward Irvington Park on Mischief Night, the night before Halloween. Two kids jumped out and pelted Morris with eggs, coating Morris’ new leather jacket.

“Raheem chased them down,” Kyle said. “He was roughing up one of the guys, and he kept saying something I couldn’t understand because he as taking so fast. About the eighth time, I finally understood. He was yelling “You’re Going to Clean My Jacket.”

As Steele says it, the phrase comes out as a high pitched squeal: “You’regoingtocleanmyjacket.”

“Back in the day, fighting wasn’t a bad deal,” Morris said. “It was just a fight. You didn’t have to worry about getting stabbed or shot. It was hand to hand. No one was afraid to get their backs dirty. Today, they want to shoot you. I don’t understand that one yet.”

Fifteen years after he graduated, Morris walks through the halls of his old high school, and heads turn as he passes. Irvington is 82 perent African-American. The school is 96 percent.

A lot of young faces look the way Morris’ used to look. A lot of young lives began the same way.

FROM PLAYER TO COACH

Raheem Morris almost didn’t have to coach his way to the NFL. According to those who know him best, he could have made it as a player.

His senior season at Hofstra, Morris was having a fine year at safety, and the Pride was ranked 14th in the country. But when a teammate was injured, Morris volunteered to move to cornerback. Kyle Steele, his college roommate, says it cost him a shot at the pros.

“If he had stayed at safety, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he would have played in the league,” said Steele. “No doubt.”

Instead, Raheem became a coach, making $5,000 a year to break down tape, starting a journey that would lead him from Hofstra to Cornell to the Jets to the Bucs to Kansas State. And then back to the Bucs.

Going to the Bucs, Morris said, “was like going to Princeton.” There, he learned from Mike Tomlin, and from Rod Marinelli, and from Joe Barry, and from Monte Kiffin, and from Gruden.

These days, Raheem is the biggest question mark in town. He is only 32, and he has never been a head coach, and the defense faded badly last year, and the schedule is imposing. Tampa Bay has its own storm clouds on the horizon.

“You’re talking about the odds against him,” Bam said. “I don’t think he would have it any other way. I think he’s going to thrive under the pressure.”

Why not? The crumbling buildings and pockmarked streets suggest Morris already has survived other pressures. What were the odds against him on Osborne? What were the expectations in the hallways of Irvington?

After enduring all of that, do you expect Morris to lack confidence?

He smiles again.

“Self-confidence,” Morris says, “has never been one of my problems.”

After serving as a graduate assistant at his alma mater for one season, Morris was tabbed to coach secondary and special teams at Cornell. Before joining the Ivy League, Greg Gigantino gave his protégé a bit of advice that still rings between Morris’ ears today; raspy New York voice and all.

Just be yourself, Slick!

Morris, then 22, walked into his first staff meeting at Cornell donning a velour sweat suit, diamond studs in both ears, a pair of Timberlands and a New York Yankees cap (backward, of course).

Reaction?

“The guy had it — and you knew it right away,” recalled then Cornell Coach Pete Mangurian. “He was confident, he was intelligent and just had an air about him. You saw it then like you see it now.”

That was 10 years ago.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers open their mandatory offseason mini-camp Tuesday, the 32-year-old Morris will be all over the trio of fields assessing, overseeing and critiquing this crossroads moment of a franchise that holds the bay area hostage each fall.

Morris is the youngest head coach in the NFL for one reason (and it’s not because of an impressive resume). He’s himself.

No pretense.

“I wouldn’t know any other way,” Morris said.

After seven seasons with Jon Gruden as the face of the franchise, the new point man of the organization looks an awful lot like the players he’s coaching. Last season, the Bucs fell victim to the NFL reality that players sometimes just stop listening to their coach. That appeared evident in a four-game losing streak that ended the season and cost Tampa Bay a playoff spot.

In Morris, the Bucs have a coach who has their attention maybe because he speaks their language.

“When guys stop believing, this game is not fun anymore,” running back Earnest Graham said. “You have to really and truly believe in the person leading you, and I can tell you this team has a lot of love for this guy.”

Time will tell whether the Bucs have a lot of wins for him.

The eraly years

Morris grew up in crime-riddled Irvington, N.J., where he is far from the most famous to hail from the town near Newark. Call him a distant third behind Jerry Lewis and Queen Latifah, but his story is no less inspirational.

As a child in Irvington, N.J., Morris was diagnosed with a muscle disorder that forced him to wear a metal brace on his right leg at the age of 6. He would walk one day, doctors said, but running and playing sports was out of the question.

“I’ve seen the pictures of me wearing that brace, but I really don’t even remember it,” Morris said of his young Forrest Gump-like days. “What I do know is I beat those odds right out of the box.”

It was only the beginning.

Before long, he was running and starring in football and basketball, all the while hurdling the trapdoors and pitfalls of Irvington. Morris opted to play defensive back at Hofstra. The coach there, Joe Gardi, gave Morris a nickname: The Coach.

“He had all the qualities,” Gardi recalled. “He was always talking, always leading. And he had instincts. You could just see it.”

Herman Edwards did. In 2001, the New York Jets head coach was jogging at Hofstra, site of the club’s training facility, and saw a young secondary coach in action. Edwards immediately was impressed.

Morris got a minority internship with the Jets. Edwards, former secondary coach under Tony Dungy in Tampa, recommended Morris for the defensive quality control post with the Bucs the next year, and the path to becoming the seventh head coach in team history began.

That he got here so soon is still a bit overwhelming.

“It’s not a wow factor,” Morris said. “It’s a humble factor. I have the greatest respect for the position I’m in, as well as for those who were in it before me.”

Full circle

Mangurian is now the Bucs offensive line coach, having come to Tampa by way of New England. He still has the image of Morris stalking the Cornell sidelines in total command of his position players.

That he’ll be doing it as a head coach — at 32 — isn’t a big deal.

“No one could have foreseen this for him based on how the league has been,” Mangurian said. “But the reality is the league is changing.”

In 2009, four coaches in the NFL will be 39 years old or younger.

Bucs quarterback Byron Leftwich played with one of those four in Pittsburgh last season, winning a Super Bowl under 36-year-old Mike Tomlin, who as Tampa Bay’s secondary coach for five seasons (’01-05) groomed Morris for the next step.

Leftwich marveled at the button’s Tomlin pushed with his players, and sees many of the same qualities in his new coach. He hesitates, however, to use the phrase “players coach” to describe either one. There’s a connotation that really doesn’t apply.

“Some might take that as being soft on guys, and that’s not true,” Leftwich said. “A players coach is a guy who understands today’s player and coaches us differently than they would have years ago. Raheem? Everybody loves him. But I’ve seen him put his foot down, too.”

The next phase of that imprint is mandatory mini-camp. Morris and his staff will use the next three days to set a standard of work ethic the players will be held to when they return from summer break for training camp, which opens Aug. 1 at One Buc Place.

They’ll feed off their leader’s relentless energy. They won’t be able to help themselves. Neither will Morris.

It’s all he knows.

“I’ve been blessed,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of people help me and I’ve had to make some tough decisions _ good decisions _ along the way. But I’ve been preparing for this all my life.”

Morris, who just may be Irvington’s most famous native son, will return today to his hometown, where plans call for him to be honored at a luncheon, a dinner and a ceremony in which he will receive the key to the city.

“Everything that’s happened to me since Jan. 16 has been flattering, but you have to remain humble, too, and there are a lot of people in Irvington that helped me get to where I am right now,” Morris said.

“Those people deserve some kudos, too, and so getting a chance to go back home and be around those guys and see those guys is awesome. I know I’ll have some family there, too, so I’m real excited.”

Morris attended Irvington High School, where a pep rally in his honor will be held this morning. Later, Morris will attend a dinner designed to raise funds for the school’s track and football field.

Irvington is a town of about 60,000 that lies near Newark, and has a storied history that includes a name change sparked by its inclusion in a famous song title.

Originally known as Camptown because it served as a tent city for traveling workers, the burgh became the basis for the lyrics in song writer Stephen Foster’s song “Camptown Races.”

Concerned that people would get the wrong impression of the town as a result of the song’s lyrics, citizens voted in 1850 to re-name the town Irvingtown in honor of Irving. The town later dropped the w from its name.

Though small, Irvington boasts of being the hometown of several famous people including comedian Jerry Lewis, entertainer Queen Latifah and 2008 Olympic gold medal swimmer Cullen Jones.