FLOWERY BRANCH — In 2007, Falcons coach Arthur Smith started his NFL coaching career under legendary coach Joe Gibbs in the nation’s capital.
“I love that Arthur,” Gibbs told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently.
After a year as a graduate assistant at North Carolina, Smith started at the bottom of the NFL coaching ladder as a defensive quality-control assistant. He was doing most of those mundane support-staff duties while trying to keep a low-profile.
“I’m telling you, he was the most conscientious, squared-away young guy,” Gibbs said. “I really think he’s going to be a great coach. I think he’s going to be a great NFL coach for a long time. So, anyway, if you see him, tell him I love him.”
It was Gibbs’ second stint as Washington’s coach. From 1981-92 he guided Washington to three Super Bowl titles. In the second stint, from 2004-07, he led the team to the playoffs twice before retiring. Gibbs was enshrined in the Pro Football of Hall of Fame in 1996.
Also in 2007, Gibbs hired former Buffalo defensive coordinator Jerry Gray as his secondary coach/defensive backs coach. Smith learned a lot of his NFL lessons under Gray.
So, when Smith got the Falcons job in January 2021, it was no surprise that he wanted to hire Gray, who then was with the Packers.
The Packers wouldn’t let him out of his contract, and Smith had to wait two seasons to hire his coaching mentor.
“Well, No. 1, I knew he was good at what he did when we were together in Washington,” Gray said. “So, that was my first time getting a chance to kind of see. He was basically in that same role when we were in Washington. I was a DB coach over there. And we were serving Joe Gibbs.”
Smith was a diligent quality-control guy, who paid attention to the minor details.
“He’s more like Joe Gibbs than anybody else that I’ve been with,” Gray said. “He wants to run the football. He wants to play great defense and you win championships.”
When Gray went to the Tennessee Titans as the defensive coordinator in 2011, he hired Smith as a defensive quality-control assistant.
“I knew I needed another guy that was a quality control who was smart,” Gray said. “That understood defense, even though I knew he was offensive guy. We got him over there and he did a great job.”
Gray and Smith didn’t stay together on defense long with the Titans.
“Then (Tennessee coach) Mike Munchak kind of stole him and put him on offense because he knew how good he was going to be,” Gray said.
That time with the defense and Smith’s familiarity with Gray currently is helping the Falcons.
“When he looks at us (on defense), he knows from the defensive standpoint what we’re trying to do,” Gray said. “It’s not just, ‘I’m the head coach of the offense and you guys do your own stuff.’ He knows what we’re doing over there. He understands what we’re trying to do, he makes sure that it’s sound so that we can win football games.”
Smith, the son of FedEx founder and chairman Fred Smith, kept a low profile. It took years for some of the coaches in Tennessee to figure out Smith’s background. While he’s his own coach, others sensed that he’s picked up things from his father that are applicable to football.
“Just knowing Arthur and (having) been around him, he knows that nothing is going to be constant, there’s going to be a change,” Gray said. “OK, make an adjustment. Don’t panic over the adjustment. There’s some things you can’t control. So, get ready to go.”
Smith, who’s set to enter his third season with the Falcons, is molding the team to his likeness.
“So, I think he’s getting our team like that,” Gray said. “There’s going to be some things that are going to happen in a game that we can’t control. It may be a dropped punt. Maybe this. Maybe that. So, what are you going to do about it? Go out there on the football field and get ready for the next play.”
Smith is trying to instill that sudden-change mindset into his players and coaches.
“We can go out there to play, it doesn’t matter about the circumstances that we can control,” Gray said. “What can you do and make an adjustment to keep going to the next play.”
Gray sees a lot of Gibbs in Smith.
“One of the things people wouldn’t know about coach Gibbs (is that) he loves jokes,” Gray said. “We’ll be in the stretch line, and he’ll get a guy to talk, say a joke. I mean, everybody’s having fun because he wanted us loose, but he knew once we got in practice, practice was going to take care of itself.”
There’s a time for jokes, and then there’s time go get down to business.
“Arthur has a little bit of that,” Gray said. “He likes a little bit of joking on the side, but when it’s time to go business, we’re going to do business. You can’t be business 90 minutes in a row. That’s not (sustainable); you’re going to wear yourself out.”
Smith is quick to show his personality in team meetings. He has a segment called “The News” that players find hilarious. Tight end John FitzPatrick said he likes to stay out of “The News.”
“You know, you’ve got to have something that’s going to loosen the guys up,” Gray said. “Tell them a joke. He’ll get players to do it. I mean, that’s what Joe Gibbs did. So, Arthur’s doing it.”
The Falcons have gone 7-10 in each of Smith’s first two seasons. His undermanned teams have played in 22 one-score games and posted a 12-10 mark.
“He’s feeling his way,” Gray said. “And you can see this is my first year with him as a head coach, but I’ve seen what he’s built over the last two years. You know, he’s built some consistent guys. They’ve been in a lot of tough football games. Now, let’s learn how to win those close games.”
Smith enjoyed his time with Gibbs.
“It was awesome,” Smith said. “When you’re young and everybody’s starting out in their jobs, they think they know everything, and you realize when you get older that you didn’t know much at all.”
Smith tried to glean as much as he could from the early coaching experiences with Gibbs.
“I just put my head down and tried to work, soak it all up,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of things that I watched him do that made a lot more sense to me now that I just observed. He’s been such a big mentor to me behind the scenes.”
Gibbs, who briefly was a minority owner of the Falcons, and Smith stay in touch.
“We try to catch up, and everything he tells me, I try to write down because there’s guys like Coach that have a lot of wisdom,” Smith said. “But the impact he’s had has been enormous, especially in the last six years. Then going back and thinking about that year in ‘07, some of the things that happened and the way he handled it makes a lot more sense to me now.
“Back then, I was breaking things down, busy trying to get the walk-through cards, drawing cards and trying to learn and do my job as best as I could. As I’ve gotten to grow in this league and jobs have changed, I can’t say enough good things about him.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
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