NASHVILLE — Arthur Smith acknowledges coaching against the Tennessee Titans in a regular-season game for the first time after spending 10 years with the franchise will be weird.
Smith will walk into the visitors’ locker room with the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday at Nissan Stadium, instead of the familiar home side. And with this an alumni weekend for the Nashville franchise — players from both the Houston Oilers days and the Tennessee era will be welcomed back — Smith will see even more familiar faces than he might have. That group includes six coaches, a former Tennessee general manager who’s now Atlanta’s senior personnel executive and five Falcons.
So, yes, this game means more.
“You try to pretend that it doesn’t, but you know obviously it does,” Smith said.
A Memphis native and the son of FedEx founder Fred Smith, he was part of four head coaching regimes in Tennessee as he worked his way from defensive quality control assistant in 2011 to offensive coordinator under current Titans head coach Mike Vrabel.