PITTSBURGH — Arthur Smith wanted to get away from the NFL for a while when the Atlanta Falcons fired him in early January, just hours after they finished his third and final season as head coach with a third consecutive 7-10 record.
Far, far away, apparently.
Eager to clear his head, Smith and his wife Allison headed to Dubai in the Middle East and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, quite literally half a world away.
Smith knew he needed a break. Just a short one, though. Sitting out even one season didn’t appeal to the Memphis native, who is hardwired to coach, so finding his next landing spot was never too far from his mind.
There was a steady stream of phone calls from teams interested in bringing him in as an offensive coordinator, the position he had held for the final two of his 10 seasons as an assistant with the Tennessee Titans before being hired to head up the Falcons. The call that stood out had Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin on the other end.
While Smith stressed he didn’t cut his vacation short to take an interview because “I didn’t want to get divorced,” minutes after his plane touched down in New York, he was setting up an in-person interview in Pittsburgh, which quickly turned into a job offer to help the Steelers overcome five years of mediocrity.
Asked what stood out to him about this opportunity as opposed to some others that might have come his way, Smith pointed to the franchise’s storied history and the mentors he has had — former Titans coach Mike Vrabel and longtime NFL assistant Tom Moore chief among them — who were molded by their own stops in Pittsburgh.
“There’s so many guys, players and coaches, (who) swear by this place,” Smith said before the Steelers began mandatory minicamp on Tuesday. “It was a home run for me. It’s funny how life works that way. You know, things don’t go your way. And then another door opens, and I couldn’t have asked for a better situation.”
A situation that doesn’t look dissimilar to the one Smith inherited when he took over calling offensive plays in Nashville five years ago under Vrabel.
Those Titans teams had a bruising running game led by Derrick Henry, who would rush for 2,000-plus yards in Smith’s second season as offensive coordinator. The Steelers have one of the league’s best current running back tandems in Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren.
Tennessee entered 2019 with a quarterback looking to reset his career in Ryan Tannehill, a former Miami Dolphins starter traded to the Titans who filled a backup role before taking over at midseason. Russell Wilson is trying to do the same in Pittsburgh (and so is Justin Fields, for that matter).
Enter Smith, who couldn’t quite replicate his success with the Titans during three largely blah seasons in Atlanta in which the Falcons essentially ran in place due in part to trouble scoring points consistently.
A lack of stability behind center didn’t help. Atlanta bounced from Matt Ryan to Marcus Mariota — the former Titans starter Tannehill succeeded — to Desmond Ridder to Taylor Heinicke at quarterback during Smith’s tenure. Smith declined to get into specifics about what went wrong with the Falcons, saying simply things didn’t “go the way you want.”
He should be given plenty of time to figure things out in Pittsburgh, where stability at the top has been the norm for decades. On Monday, the Steelers signed Tomlin, already the league’s longest-tenured coach, to a contract extension that runs through at least 2027.
Don’t mistake the new deal, however, for a lack of urgency.
The Steelers’ six Super Bowl championships are tied with the New England Patriots for the record, but it’s been a decade and a half since Pittsburgh’s most recent NFL title — and the franchise has lost its past five playoff contests, starting with the AFC championship game in January 2017. It’s a series of setbacks that all sort of look the same, with the Steelers falling behind early for a variety of reasons and a mistake-prone offense unable to close the gap.
Rather than make an in-house promotion to fill the coordinator position — something Tomlin previously did with Randy Fichtner and Matt Canada — the Steelers instead identified an outsider with a philosophy that closely mirrors Tomlin’s “play physical” mindset.
Smith, though, doesn’t feel or sound like much of an outsider. The Steelers have spent the past few months signing players who have played for him before, including running back/kick returner Cordarrelle Patterson and wide receivers Scottie Miller and Van Jefferson. Their arrivals should help ease the transition for holdovers who spent most of the past three seasons playing in a system that failed miserably.
While Smith remains cagey on just about everything — he said Wilson is in “pole position” as the starting quarterback but expects the competition with Fields to “heat up” when the team reports to training camp next month — he is adamant about his desire to stay in the NFL.
On the surface, going from head coach to a coordinator job is a demotion. Smith, who turned 42 last month, doesn’t exactly see it that way.
“It’s not if you don’t have an ego,” he said. “You have to recalibrate and look at things you can learn.”
While he could have taken an extended break to see if a higher-profile job came along, a self-imposed sabbatical would also have carried the risk of the league moving on without him.
And no amount of globetrotting could overcome his very real fear of missing out.
“I’m not old enough to want to sit out,” he said. “I want to compete, and I’m just thankful the opportunity is here.”