FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- For the third time in his career, Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Dean Pees has announced his retirement.
Pees, 73, said Monday he made the decision after multiple conversations with his wife where they weighed the pros and cons of coaching in the 2023 season. They came to the decision over the weekend that it would be the right time to step away.
Part of the reason he is retiring -- he had one year left on his contract -- is because he saw too many players hang on too long. They started to lose things and it bothered him how they might be remembered despite of the impactful careers they had. "Right now my ego and my heart tell me to stay," Pees said. "But my mind and my body tell me that it's time."
Pees said he caught a cold in Los Angeles in Week 2 and didn't feel fully better until late December. The hit he took during pregame in New Orleans in December, Pees said, did not factor into the decision.
The lack of sleep and the hours he wanted to put in also played a factor in his decision. Moreover, Pees said, "I don't want to be a deterrent" in case he started to fade because he believes strongly in the direction the Falcons are headed.
The other reason is spending more time with his family and grandchildren. Plus, his wife wants to travel -- they had planned to once he retired from the Tennessee Titans in 2020, but COVID happened and they were not able to do so. He mentioned how much his wife had sacrificed for his career and now he wanted to give back to her.
"I've got a bunch of grandsons that are playing football now and stuff and other sports," Pees said. "And I want to watch them. Sometimes I didn't even get to see my own kids play very much.
"... At least now I'd like the opportunity to see my grandkids play and to be a bigger part of their life."
Pees said it was important that he was able to tell his players in person. He also made it clear that while he has retired twice before, that this time he's done. Pees said he might stay involved in some capacity -- although he didn't rule out a complete break from the game as well -- he emphasized it won't be as a coach. He also said he doesn't see himself going back to do radio, like he did during his one-year retirement in Tennessee in 2020.
"I'm done coaching," Pees said. "And I don't want to do anything, I told you the main reason is I want to spend time with my family and my wife and do those things and so I'm not going to do anything that requires time like that.
"If some high school wanted me to come over and talk to the team or something, I might do that, I don't know because I don't want to say I'd never do that. But I'm not coaching. I'm done. I'm done."
Falcons players said Pees told the team in a meeting and then spoke to the defense separately to express his appreciation for the past season, and in some cases, two seasons.
"For me, it was exciting just knowing that he's stepping into that next stage of his life," outside linebacker Lorenzo Carter said. "He's coached for 50 years. He's been around. So it's just exciting. It's an honor to have played for him.
"He just put it out there that this is what he's been thinking and he made a decision. It's been great and I'm excited for him."
"I'm done. I'm done."Falcons DC Dean Pees, who is retiring for a third time
Pees' decision comes after the completion of his 50th year as a coach on the high school, college or professional level, a career that has spanned 12 different places, eight states, numerous head coaches and countless lives of players and young assistants influenced.
He has spent the past two seasons in Atlanta, coming out of retirement No. 2 to help first-time head coach Arthur Smith set a culture for his program and his defense.
The two had worked together and become close during their time with the Titans, where Smith was the tight ends coach and then the offensive coordinator during Pees' final season in Tennessee.
"It meant a lot. A lot of wisdom," Smith said. "People, and you never stop trying to learn from others, and it meant a lot to me personally. I'm glad he's been here."
Pees worked primarily with a young defense in 2022 -- more than half of the Falcons' opening-day starters were on rookie contracts, as was most of his depth -- and Atlanta found ways to improve as the season went on. The Falcons finished No. 23 in points allowed and No. 27 in yards allowed but gave up more than 20 points in a game just once over the final six games.
Points allowed, Pees said, was the metric he went by the most in terms of judging his defenses. The lone game in that stretch Atlanta did allow over 20 points was the one game he didn't coach after Pees was involved in an on-field accidental collision during pregame in New Orleans that briefly sent him to the hospital for precautionary measures. He was also hospitalized during a game while he was coaching the Titans in 2018, but in both cases Pees returned to coaching.
So as Pees leaves, he feels like he is also departing with Atlanta having a strong defensive culture and Pees said in January "at this point in time, I'm happy with where the defense is at" when asked if that would play into his retirement decision.
"If we were playing the same now as we were at the beginning of the year or last year, then I would say it hasn't gone like expected," Pees said in January. "But you guys tell me if you think we're playing better or we're not playing better.
"In my eyes, we're playing a lot better than we did in the first half of the year, a lot better. It's trending in the right direction. Isn't that what you want?"
Pees would know from five decades of coaching. He began his coaching career at Elmwood High School in Ohio before moving to the University of Findlay in 1979, where he became the defensive coordinator -- and a driver's education instructor. That year, they won the NAIA Division II national title.
In 1983 he moved to Division I, coordinating the defense at Miami (Ohio), where he implemented both 3-4 and 4-3 base defenses helping to build the defensive philosophies he carried throughout his career. He went from there to Navy and then Toledo under a young Nick Saban. From there, he went to Notre Dame and back with Saban to Michigan State.
Some defensive principles he honed in his years at Toledo post-Saban, when he needed to create advantages, the Falcons used this season with multiple linebacker fronts and outside linebackers, in some cases, really playing line standup defensive ends.
It was in those years of collegiate coaching that part of Pees' philosophy crystallized -- bring pressure not just from the front but from the secondary, too. Teach concepts over position. Have players who can be versatile. It's why he made sure his safeties knew both safety spots -- same with his linebackers.
"I noticed it really messed a lot of people up and they thought we were playing a 3-4 and we really weren't," Pees told ESPN in 2021. "We were playing a 4-3, but the guy who was playing standup linebacker was really a three-technique.
"And so then I started adding guys from the secondary and saying, if this is screwing up the front, maybe we can screw up the quarterback by bringing secondary guys and dropping linebackers [into coverage] and kind of making them interchangeable and that's kind of where it all started."
He took the only head-coaching job of his career in 1998 at Kent State, where he lasted six seasons with a 17-51 record before deciding to go to the NFL to work under Bill Belichick and New England Patriots, first as a linebackers coach and then defensive coordinator. He won his first of two Super Bowls in 2004.
From New England he went to the Baltimore Ravens, again first as a linebackers coach and then defensive coordinator, where he won Super Bowl No. 2 with the Ravens in 2012.
"He's one of the great defensive coordinators in the National Football League," Ravens coach John Harbaugh, whom Pees coached at Miami (Ohio), said in 2022. "No question about it."
In his NFL career, Pees had a top-10 defense in yards allowed seven times, points allowed eight times and takeaways five times.
Pees retired for the first time following the 2018 season, only to unretire less than a month later to become the defensive coordinator in Tennessee under Mike Vrabel, one of his players in New England.
He was the defensive coordinator for the Titans for two seasons before retiring a second time. He spent a year away -- he hosted a radio show during the 2020 season -- and was again lured out of retirement when Smith became the Falcons' coach.
For Smith over the past two seasons, Pees was a mentor and a culture-setter for what he was trying to build, particularly on defense, as Atlanta dug out of a salary-cap mess.
"You appreciate all the work he's put in, the sacrifice. We get paid to do this, lucky as hell, but there are a lot of sacrifices," Smith said. "Dean's a guy that's coached at every level, had success, impacted a lot of lives and impacted the game."
Throughout all the successes, all the places he's worked, one thing stood out -- and it had nothing to do with a call or anything on the field itself. It had to do with those he was around for five decades coaching the game after graduating from Bowling Green State University.
"People, players. That's why you do it," Pees said. "I sure didn't make any money early on as a coach or even as a college coach back in the day. It certainly wasn't about the money. It's all about people.
"It's about players. It's about coaches. I have so many friends and so many people, I'm getting so many texts from guys all the way back to high school, guys that played for me in high school. That's the memories."