It’s tough being a first-year head coach in the NFL, but it always helps to have an experienced coordinator on staff to ease the transition. Shortly after Arthur Smith was hired to lead the Atlanta Falcons, veteran defensive coordinator Dean Pees came out of retirement to join Smith’s staff.
Pees said he wasn’t actively seeking out coaching jobs again, but when Smith came to him, he was intrigued after their time together in Tennessee.
“I got a couple of calls from a couple of people that were going to interview for jobs, and I really kind of told them I wasn’t interested,” said Pees at Thursday’s press conference. “And then it was different — when talking to Art — because I knew Art. I knew what Art’s like, our relationship and I wanted to work with someone I knew, totally trusted, believed in, and so I said yeah.”
Pees was asked how the three different levels of the Falcons’ defense have performed throughout training camp.
“Well, I mean, they’re all tied in,” said Pees. “In all these things everybody’s got a job to do, and, there’s multiple stuff up front that those guys got to know and there’s multiple things in the back end. What makes it really multiple is the fact that sometimes you can do the same things in the front and change — do the same things with two or three different coverages. Then, there’s also some things where you can do a bunch of things up front different, and keep the same coverage.”
The ability to run different pressures up front without changing the look on the back end, and vice versa, will be a key factor for this defense.
“We can run two or three different pressures up front but play the same coverage,” said Pees. “Or we can run the same pressure up front and run two to three different coverages. So, that’s what really makes the thing multiple.”
Check out Pees’ full press conference, as shared by the team’s YouTube channel below.
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