Forget about the Falcons roster. Raheem Morris needs to be a better coach.

But what about Raheem Morris?

Is he going to be better?

With the Falcons’ playoff drought now at an improbable seventh season, the franchise needs more than what they got from him last season.

At the least, the jury is out on Morris. Look at it this way. How many times did the Falcons win games they weren’t supposed to?

Probably one — the Monday night road win in Week 2 over Philadelphia.

How many times did they lose when they probably should have won?

Four stand out in particular — the home losses to Seattle, the Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina and the road loss at New Orleans.

Another loss — at Washington — was particularly difficult to stomach when Morris made a costly clock-management decision late in regulation that reduced the Falcons’ chances of winning.

Officially, they were 7-5 when they were the favorites, this in an NFL season when favorites won more than 70% of the time, according to ESPN. The Falcons were 1-4 as underdogs.

Statistically speaking, Morris was below average at helping his team win when it was favored to do so.

It was in that vein that I asked Morris, speaking with media on the first day of organized team activities, about the ways that he recognized that he had to improve as a coach from last season. To his credit, he answered it directly, naming his ability to identify problems more quickly.

“I think that’s something that we all can really do,” he said. “But when you’re the head coach and you’re overseeing all the different things, you’ve got to be able to see those things a little faster, to be able to make some of those corrections.”

One of those things was the pass rush, which was awful. Through the first eight games, the Falcons had managed only six sacks. It was around that time that Morris made changes, particularly using the blitz more effectively.

The defense finished with 25 sacks in the final nine games.

“That’s definitely a great example,” Morris said. “It’s one of those situations where the pass rush got better. I was able to put more hands in, get more involved.”

Ironically, the first half of the season is when the Falcons were playing better; they were 5-3 in those eight games when the pass rush was so docile.

But it does speak to a shortcoming that Morris recognized in himself as the team underwent its standard self-scouting after the season. It shouldn’t have taken eight games for the shortcomings of the pass rush to be addressed effectively.

“We were able to fix a lot of things on offense quickly,” Morris said. “We were able to fix a lot of things on defense, didn’t do it as quickly as you wanted to do them.”

That surely is part of why Morris moved to dismiss Lake after one season. Beyond the pass rush, there were dozens of less noticeable problems that cropped up. It is how an NFL season unfolds.

“Something starts to work and takes off, and then defenses figure out how to stop it, and you’re on to the next thing,” veteran left tackle Jake Matthews said.

The biggest decision of the season — sitting quarterback Kirk Cousins when he clearly was struggling with what he revealed after the season was a shoulder and elbow injury — was quite arguably not made soon enough.

Cousins was injured in the 10th game of the season, in the road loss to New Orleans. It started a four-game stretch (all Falcons losses) when he threw eight interceptions without a touchdown. Cousins started one more game, a win at Las Vegas in which the team won in spite of him, before Morris made the change.

For a number of reasons, not least of which is that the leadership of the team could well be changed if the Falcons don’t make the playoffs, it’s critical that Morris be better at this.

“That really is the name of the game,” said Matthews, going into his 12th season. “You start in OTA 1, you feel like everything’s going to go perfect, and immediately, even in this first practice, we’ve got to tweak things and fix them. Which team is the best at doing that, can adapt and make the changes?”

Morris essentially acknowledged that that team wasn’t the Falcons last year.

Detractors would say it’s evidence that Morris isn’t the right coach for this team. Those more hopeful would say it’s a reason the Falcons should be better this fall.

There are no clear answers at the end of May. Morris owned his weaknesses, an admirable trait in a leader. A season may hinge on whether he can improve upon them.