It wasn’t, in the moment, any different for Arthur Smith. The Atlanta Falcons' first-time head coach had seen other people go through this before, been on enough staffs to see what worked and what didn’t. He’d been working toward this for 15 years now since his playing career ended at North Carolina.
It’s not a game or a full practice with 90 guys running around. But this weekend was a milestone for Smith of sorts at Falcons rookie minicamp -- the first time he held the whistle as the one running the show.
On the field, it felt the same for him as it had with the Titans and Washington, when he was an assistant and then a coordinator.