Falcons defensive coordinator Dean Pees, 73, retiring after 18 seasons coaching in NFL

Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Dean Pees, 73, has informed the team and players that he is retiring, the team announced on Monday.

The Falcons are expected to cast a wide net for Pees’ replacement, NFL Network Insider Tom Pelissero reported. Atlanta’s defense ranked 27th in yards allowed, 24th in interception rate, 32nd in sack rate and 23rd in points allowed during the 2022 season.

The 7-10 Falcons fell from the playoff race late in the season, but allowed 25 or fewer points in each of the final nine games.

“You appreciate all the work and the sacrifice,” Falcons head coach Arthur Smith said of Pees. “We all get paid to do this and we’re lucky as hell, but there are sacrifices you have to make. Dean’s a guy who has coached at every level and had success. He has impacted a lot of lives and he has impacted the game.”

Pees, 73, joined the team prior to the 2021 season after Smith became head coach. Prior to that, Pees served as defensive coordinator for the Patriots, Ravens and Titans in his 18 years in the NFL. He’d been a college coach before that, working as an assistant with Nick Saban and also as the head coach at Kent State for six years.

His coaching career, which began in high school in the 1970s, has spanned 50 years.

This is not the first “retirement” for Pees. He originally announced he was retiring from the Ravens following the 2017 season, only to take the Titans’ defensive coordinator job less than a month later.

Pees won two Super Bowls — one as Patriots linebacker coach and one as Ravens defensive coordinator, when he oversaw his defense’s critical goal-line stand in the Super Bowl XLVII victory over the San Francisco 49ers.

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