Frank Smith – January 10, 2024
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Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Offensive Coordinator Frank Smith
(Fans want to know, what do you do on gameday if Head Coach Mike McDaniel is calling plays?) – “Well, when the hot dogs are out, and the chips are done… (laughter). It’s more of, we’re actively involved in communication throughout the game. What we’re seeing, what the defense is doing, talking about play suggestions, what we’re looking at as far as the attack, how we need to address stuff like that. So it’s just active communication with him and then really the whole staff as to what’s occurring and what we need to do at that moment.”
(Do you suggest plays?) – “Yeah, we talk about it. I mean, as far as – the great thing is when you work with someone for so long, normally it’s like, ‘hey what do you think?’ Yep, I was kind of already there. At halftime it’s hilarious. I mean, literally as we’re game planning for this game, he (McDaniel) pulled up a couple plays and then he’s like, what about that. I’m like, this is eerie. Because you’re just around someone so much, you kind of see things in a certain light and it makes it real easy to get connected to what you think the approach and the attack is. A lot of the times where it’s ‘hey, I’m seeing this,’ and he’s like ‘yep, just circled it.’ It’s a very fluid conversation with him and I. That’s why it makes coming to work so much fun.”
(The Panthers announced that they had requested to interview you for their head-coaching vacancy. Just wanted to ask do you plan on interviewing for that and if so, how are you balancing that with the playoff game this weekend?) – “That stuff’s for the future. It doesn’t happen for the next week or something. As you guys know, and we talked about it before, it’s extremely humbling. I mean, you go out in your career and you set forward so many things that you want to have as your personal goals. To be at the cusp of all that, I’m truly thankful for all the people who helped me get here. Those things in the future will obviously transpire when they do. But today is about today and we have a lot of work to do to get ready for Saturday night. The one thing that I never take for granted is where I’m at today and what is necessary. Those things in the future will be when they come. I have the greatest job that I could ever ask for and I work for an organization with people that I’ve always wanted to work with. We’re just worried today about being the best we can be and getting ready for Saturday.”
(Would they like you to interview next week?) – “I don’t know. I don’t really concern myself with that just because of the rules and all that. I just know that’s the future. I know that today in about an hour and a half, I know exactly what I’m going to be doing. The future will handle itself when it does. I’m not really concerned about it right now. I’m concerned with helping these guys get ourselves ready to go to Kansas City.”
(Things are so fluid and changing it seems like by the minute almost. Have any other teams contacted you or put out feelers?) – “I don’t know. I can’t talk to anyone. I try to stay in my little world and fight crime in the darkness of trying to solve problems for the Dolphins. All that stuff, I’m fortunate I have people to help me in my life, and I just try and stay focused on today and make sure that we’re putting ourselves in the best position to have a successful game on Saturday.”
(As a candidate, you don’t wake up on Tuesday and go to an interview Wednesday. This is prep you’ve probably done for years of your career to get to this point, putting together action plans, binders, things like that. Is that correct?) – “Maybe some people do. I’m more of like, I didn’t really look at, ‘okay, some day I want this.’ I never looked at my career as at the end, I want this result, because then what if you don’t? How do you look back on your career as to what it meant? I’ve always focused on each day, it’s helping the people around you, serving others and adding value to their day, adding value to their lives. And you’re going, why is that? For me, football taught me who I am. It helped me find my career. It helped me find a lot of value in my life in college. It helped me give me my best friends. So much. I’ve found when you love something, you sacrifice and you invest. The more you give to football, to me, it’s always given back. So I never really looked at, ‘hey, I want all these things and I’m planning for all that.’ I always looked at it like, ‘alright, what’s my job today and how do I maximize it, and how do I become the best at what I need to do today?’ Then as you go along, you get reps. I’ve been surrounded by some great people I’ve been able to work with. I mean, Super Bowl-winning head coaches and great players. As many reps that you need to get ready for all the stuff in the future, you can get by listening and absorbing. I never really worried about what the end result was going to be. I just worried about making sure that I could add value today and be the best service I could to whoever I needed to do it with.”
(Since your focus is on this week, what impresses you about Chiefs Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s defense?) – “Basically, their ability to really communicate well. You can see that they’re very well connected. They like to dictate the terms, make sure that they’re all, from the back end to the front end, they’re playing sound defense. I worked with him in New Orleans in 2012, so he’s a very meticulous guy. He’s going to be on all the details. He’ll be on all the things that we do as an offense. So it’ll be a big challenge because you have a guy like Steve and his staff that do a great job with Andy (Reid) and just the whole program, and going into Arrowhead is not an easy endeavor. It’s going to be on us to be on all of the things we need to be ready for and our communication and the environment as we go into Saturday night.”
(I’m doing something on the big play. What does the big play do for this offense? We’ve seen many big plays from this offense. And what do your big plays do the opposing defense?) – “I mean, if you just into the nitty gritty of football, you say, okay, 100 yards equals seven points. So your ability to manufacture yards is you’re ability to score. The more yards you can accumulate, the more likely you are to get points which is how you win the game. An explosive play allows for you to cut down how many opportunities you need to go there. You’re increasing your likelihood to get down to the other side, to the end zone. But then, what does it allow for the offense to do? That’s like nitty gritty. My first year in the NFL, I had Howard Mudd explaining that to me and just the essence of manufacturing yards and moving the ball down the field and what it means to points. At the time I was like, okay? Now the older I’ve gotten, the more it makes sense from the old (Bill) Parcells stuff about the hidden yardage and how it all relates to scoring. But for our offense, it’s about how we’re trying to attack the defense as far as attacking them from sideline to sideline and then goal line to goal line. Our ability to attack down the field, it just falls into kind of our identity and what we try to do in our strive and our approach to each game. Defenses then have an answer to that. Then what is our response to it and trying to make sure that we can accurately keep trying to challenge down the field. It’s a complementary aspect. There’s different ways to get explosive plays down the field or gain yards, whether it’s explosive runs, explosive passes, screens. There are many different ways you can try and manufacture it. Through play-action passes, you’re giving a conflict of the run element to collapse and then now to stretch, to find the holes in between the zones. So that’s just something that is kind of part of our offense and allows for you to accumulate more yards in a shorter period of time.”
(Does the deflating affect on the defense, especially QB Tua Tagovailoa, WR Tyreek Hill, WR Jaylen Waddle, does the defense think, how do you defend this? Do you see that?) – “Sometimes you can see that their initial thoughts maybe weren’t materializing the way they thought, or they started off trying to defend it, and then the running game gets going where they have to come down to take it away. It works complementary. The NFL is full of a lot of experienced defensive coordinators who have multiple ways of trying to take elements of your offense away. Then it’s on us to make sure that for one area that they are trying to work on, ok how do we have the complementary piece to attack their scheme offensively. It’s an area that we enjoy working at, and it’s built for the guys we have here. But at the same time, it’s about gaining yards, getting the ball down the field, either in chunks, or efficient movement. It’s like whatever way we need to do it to effectively play at our best is what we’re striving for.”
(I wanted to ask your philosophy on the practice squad, and kind of stashing veteran guys on there. How much more helpful is it to be able to bring in an experienced player in a tight spot versus having to plug in a 23-year-old who doesn’t have as many reps?) – “I think it’s kind of more of their perspective. If you got a more experienced guy, they’ve had more years in the league and they’ve probably been in situations where they understand what they are going to be thrust into. Guys who are younger in their career are still growing and developing, and maybe through the development, they can continue to have a good career. The ability to have veterans who have been through tough situations and playoff experience, those things are invaluable because when they come in the building, they know what time it is. They also are trying to maximize their opportunity to be on a successful team. Clearly there is value to both, and whenever you have the opportunity to get guys who can help you, and help their teammates, that’s something that we’re always looking for.”
(What are the challenges that you’re preparing for with the cold and maybe the wind too?) – “All inclement weather, there are obviously factors that we try to make sure that we’re on what we can control. You can’t control what the weather is going to be that day, if it is minus weather or whatever. All we can do is make sure that we know how to maintain what we need to do to be at our best. When I was in New Orleans in 2013, we were a dome team and went to Philadelphia, and I think it was a 20 degree or 10 degree weather day. We went through a plan of how we were going to do it, and how we would handle the weather, but ultimately it comes down to the guys you have and their mindset. Whatever the challenges are going to be, you want to approach it and take it on. I grew up in Wisconsin. I was laughing. I remember when I was in high school and it was -10, and the windchill was miserable, and I remember it not being that cold. And then now when you’re coaching, and it’s -10, you’re like it is cold. Actively moving around sounds fantastic in that weather. (laughter)”
