Arthur Smith is putting together his coaching staff and on Thursday, the new coach of the Atlanta Falcons made a number of critical assignments, including his three coordinators.
Smith has announced that Dean Pees, Dave Ragone and Marquice Williams will join him in Atlanta as coordinators. He also said that broad coach Dave Brock was detained from the Falcons’ previous coaching staff.
Both Pees and Ragone were linked to Smith earlier as possible coordinators. Jason La Canfora from CBS Sports first report that Pees, a longtime defensive coach who has been part of two Super Bowl defensive jobs throughout his career, will “to some extent join Smith’s new staff in Atlanta.”
Last Friday, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler tweeted minutes after the Hawks made the announcement about Smith that a ‘name’ is strongly associated with Arthur Smith’s staff while taking on the Atlanta Falcons job: Dave Ragone, who passes the game’s coordinator. I’m told the chances are good that he’s becoming Smith’s OC after five years in Chicago. ‘
And as it turns out, both reports were accurate.
Pees will take over as the Falcons defense coordinator and Ragone has been named as the offensive coordinator. During his introductory press conference, however, Smith said he would be the attacker of the offense.
“We’ll take time,” Smith said. “We interviewed several people for coordinators and staff, and as I said, we will take time. We want to be adaptable. It will be a big thing here. We will play according to the strengths of our team, but we want to be flexible and adaptable, and that’s one thing we look for schematically as we go through this process of appointing coaches. ‘