HOUSTON — When Raheem Morris’ wide receivers tell him to drop down and do push-ups, he does them.

“When I drop the baton, they make me do 10,” Morris laughs. “They set the standard in the room. They want to have some consequences for dropping the ball. They want to pride themselves in having the best hands.”

Being their position coach, Morris could overrule them, but then again his players know the position much better than he does. The Atlanta Falcons’ top three receivers — Julio Jones, Mohamed Sanu, and Taylor Gabriel — have played the position a combined 14 seasons in the NFL. Morris has played zero from college onward. He has coached exactly one: This season, after dedicating his last 18 to the defensive side of the ball.

Morris has been a defensive backs coach, defensive coordinator, and head coach in the NFL. But when the Falcons’ eight-year receivers coach Terry Robiskie became the Tennessee Titans’ new offensive coordinator last January, head coach Dan Quinn tabbed Morris.

Outside of Jones, Morris would be working with all new players — Sanu was signed in March, and Gabriel was signed in September. It seems like tasking Morris to integrate brand new players into the offense would be a bad idea, but things could not have worked out much better.

Sanu has become the rock-solid complementary weapon he never quite was next to A.J. Green in Cincinnati. Gabriel has been the offense’s biggest breakout performer after being being waiver by the Cleveland Browns. This season, 13 different players caught touchdown passes for the Falcons, setting an NFL record.

Morris doesn’t know all of the intricacies of being a pass catcher, but he’s really good at two other things: 1) Anticipating defensive backs, and 2) Getting players hype.

For someone like Jones, that first part is invaluable. He has been playing wide receiver at an elite level since he entered the NFL as a No. 6 overall pick in 2011. He knows how to physically beat defenders

“He can't really tell me a lot about being receiver, because I've been doing it my whole career,” Jones said Tuesday. “He's been over on the defensive side, he understands defense ... what they're trying to take away, what leverage they have to play, where the gaps are in the defense.

“I understand where they are as a receiver, but he just tells us the concepts as far as where the linebackers are going to bust to, what jobs they have on particular plays.”

It isn’t the first time that Morris has started a new job by fire. In 2009, he was named the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach at age 32, making him the youngest head coach in the NFL. He turned the team around from 3-13 to 10-6 in his first season, before dipping to 4-12 and getting fired after his second. At age 40, he’d still be a relatively young head coach, and he’d embrace the chance to take over another team, too.

“I absolutely try to own 100 percent of the job that I'm doing right now,” Morris says. “When you're a head coach you want to be the best head coach. When you're a defensive back coach you want to be the best defensive back coach you can be. ... And when I'm in the receiving coach, I want to be the best receiving coach that I can absolutely be.”

Morris has embodied the role of a receivers coach to the full extent he can. At the same time, he made his players comfortable thinking like defensive backs.

“He's going into the mind of the DB, what the DB's thinking, step-kick, which leverage he wants to use to kind of bring you to the safety and bring you this way,” Gabriel says. “That's something that I feel like every receiving corps in the league should try because it helps us a lot.”

Morris’ effect is more than tactical.

“He brings a defensive mindset of, 'I'm going to hit you first before you hit me. I'm going to be physical with you first before you're physical for me,’” Sanu says. “It comes from Q, but Coach Ra tells us the same thing. If you go out there and lay it all on the line, if you make that extra effort or make this block, or make sure you're running this route so you can pull this guy, or whatever the case may be, it's going to help us in the long run.”

It helps that Morris has endless energy — “He always has a juice to him,” according to third-year wideout Nick Williams. As the assistant head coach, he is not only a confidant to Quinn, but one of the lead motivators on the team. Owner Arthur Blank said it was Morris who encouraged the septuagenarian to dance his happy ass off after the Falcons beat the Seattle Seahawks to advance to the NFC Championship.

"It was just something at the moment," Blank told ESPN.com. "Obviously, it wasn’t planned. I had a bunch of players around me all dancing. I had a coach – Raheem Morris – who encouraged me. I kind of looked over at him and saw him carrying on, looking at me. I felt I had a need to respond to that. It was fun for me. It was fun for the players."

Morris entered the role at the right moment. There had been lingering chemistry issues from the 2015 season, when the Falcons lost six straight after starting 6-1. Quarterback Matt Ryan threw 16 interceptions to 21 touchdowns last season. Wideout Roddy White blamed offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan for the offense’s struggles after he was released in the spring.

Now Ryan is expected to be named NFL MVP, and Shanahan will be the head coach of the 49ers next season after drawing up the eighth-best scoring offense in league history. Quinn, with Morris at his right hand, has relied on corny sayings to improve the Falcons’ morale, and they have worked. One of the Falcons’ go-to motivational tactics has been watching legendary boxing matches as a team every Wednesday before games.

“Our players relate. Julio Jones' question is, every time something comes up, is ‘Who are we?’” Morris says. “We're watching this fight, Hearns vs. Hagler — OK I don't know what the result is, but who am I? And they put themselves in those shoes and they want to live in that light.”

Likewise, Morris has been OK with a shifting sense of self throughout his career. He has never needed a certain level of authority to be happy, nor would he ever consider himself unqualified for a job as long as he could prepare. He has proven that he is one of the most capable coaches in the NFL for that reason. It’s such a simple formula for success: Just swallow your ego and do what you do best.

“Coming in, you had a player like Julio Jones, who's already come into his own, has his own way of going about his business, his own little processes,” Morris says. “I just wanted to give those guys the mentality of what I bring to the table. Fast, physical. Which is not me, it's really us, it's really our team.”