"I have a hard time calling him Carl," said Drew Bledsoe, who spent one season working under Smith in New England. "Everyone who knows him calls him Tater." The 70-year-old coach began working in the NFL in 1986, and the three decades since have given way to different origin stories behind his nickname. Regardless, Tater is a name quarterbacks say with fondness. He comes to Houston after spending the past eight years in Seattle, including seven as quarterbacks coach, and one of the men he is leaving behind, Russell Wilson, said he’s "losing a great coach, and (is) going to miss a great, great friend." Wilson and others describe Smith as a coach who is sharp, easy-going and willing to coach to his players’ strengths, rather than make them orient to his desires. Smith is also someone who knows he works with men playing the most highly scrutinized position in sports, and he constantly works to ease their frustrations. He might address an interception by simply saying: "Hey dude, you know you’ve got this other guy right here. Why’d you pass him up?" "That’s about the most extreme you’re going to get out of him," said David Garrard, who played for Smith in Jacksonville, where he was offensive coordinator for two seasons, beginning in 2005. The Texans are hoping Smith can have the same impact on Deshaun Watson as he had on many quarterbacks before him. This is a critical time for a new coach to step into Watson’s life and continue his development. With a franchise quarterback on a rookie contract, Houston must maximize its cap flexibility and get the most out of its young passer to contend for a Super Bowl. So what can Watson expect from his new position coach? The Athletic spoke to some of Smith’s former quarterbacks to find out.
‘Well, bad day’
When Bledsoe and Smith worked together in 1997, the Patriots played the Buccaneers, whose defense featured Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks and John Lynch, the same players who would help Tampa Bay later win a Super Bowl. Bledsoe said that defense "was really a pain in the ass to play against," and it showed in his stat line. He completed just 13 of 25 passes, threw two interceptions and took five sacks in a 27-7 New England defeat. When Bledsoe arrived to a film session with Smith the next day, the coach was matter-of-fact: "Well, bad day," Smith said, according to Bledsoe’s recollection. "Let’s move on." The same thing happened in Cleveland, where Smith coached quarterbacks from 2001-2003 after leaving the Patriots, and where he landed again as the Browns’ QBs coach for the 2009 season. During Smith’s first stint with the Browns, Kelly Holcomb and Tim Couch both had their share of struggles, and Smith would let them know he wasn’t pleased — "well that sucked," he would say as he closed the door to the quarterbacks room — but he also made sure to always spend part of film sessions highlighting what his players did well. "It was just nice to know that you had one guy that was always 100 percent in your corner, that understood that the position is really hard and sometimes it’s you, (and) sometimes it’s things that are beyond your control that affect the outcome of how things work for you," Bledsoe said. "He was really, really good that way." At some point, just as he has in the past, Smith likely will give Watson a presentation on what he calls "the tree of life," the tenets of which Bledsoe and Brady Quinn still remember. The coach tends to work his way from the top of a chart to the bottom, and along the way he lists life accomplishments that progressively transition from good to bad — getting married, having a child, throwing a touchdown pass, settling for a field goal, throwing an interception. The list continues past taking a sack in field goal range and might end with "waking up in the gutter behind the dumpster," Bledsoe said. "So he’d kind of try to draw allusions like that, which were pretty funny." The point: Throwing the ball away to end a broken play might not be so bad, and one loss, no matter how big, can’t crush you. "He’s going to calm you down while everyone else is losing their mind around you," Garrard said.
‘That’s accurate, but…’
Smith’s easy-going demeanor with players is partially rooted in a belief that he and his quarterbacks do all they can to prep for a game, so that by the time it finally arrives, they can feel at ease, as though they’re ready for any situation. Quinn said Smith likes to drill his players on how many plays they can get off in any late-game situation — whether they’re down a touchdown with 30 seconds left, no timeouts handy and the ball just outside the red zone or in need of a field goal with 10 seconds remaining and on their own side of the field. He has been around the game long enough to know what a quarterback can and can’t get away with in these situations. With no timeouts remaining and fewer than seven seconds left on the clock, he would never advise calling a passing play to win the game. "He would say, ‘If you (think you) can run a play in six seconds, good luck,’" Quinn said. This is one of the rare areas of the game in which Smith is a stickler for always following guidelines, because plenty of film study has borne them, and reducing the amount of things a quarterback must worry about in these situations can help keep that player focused. "I’m a guy who’s very into the details, and he is very much, too," Wilson said. "But also what he allowed me to do … in crunch time, in clutch situations, (is) try to relax as much as possible. We both feed off of that, me and him. That was always great." Another thing Smith is particular about: How he quizzes his quarterbacks the day before a game. Garrard said most NFLquarterbacks coaches or offensive coordinators will guide passers through plays’ progressions throughout the week, and by Saturday they "will just hand you a sheet of paper with the plays on it and say, ‘This is your quiz. Go through the plays, mark your reads — one, two, three, four.’ That kind of stuff." But Smith likes to sit his quarterbacks down a day prior to a game and run through almost the entire playbook. And because that can take a while, quarterbacks must answer in a certain format that saves time and proves they’ve truly memorized plays’ progressions. Smith calls out plays and rotates between having the starter and the backup answer. If there’s a third-string quarterback on the roster, he can expect to participate, too. "He wanted to hear it like ‘check, under, in, back,’" Garrard said as an example. "He didn’t want to hear: ‘I’m going to look through the field and read those two guys, and I’m going to find my shallow cross, and then my tight end is going to be on an end cut.’ … That’s accurate, but that’s not the way he wanted to hear it." Despite this preparation, Watson is still bound to make at least a few mistakes in each game. And when he does, he’ll return to the sideline to find Smith, who won’t stare him down or scream after an interception. Instead, Garrard said Smith will simply "throw his shoulders back and say, ‘Hey dude, you know that wasn’t really what we were looking for there."
‘If you can play, you can play’
After seven seasons as a starter and with one Super Bowl title, Wilson still appreciates that Smith always believed in him, even when the quarterback was just a 5-foot-11, third-round pick who was supposed to back up free agent acquisition Matt Flynn. "If you can play, you can play," Smith often told Wilson, even during those early days together. "And you sure can play." Wilson became the starting quarterback in Seattle at the outset of his career, in 2012. Quinn joined the Seahawks during the following offseason and watched as Smith molded Wilson. Quinn said when compared to Cleveland — where he had previously worked under Smith as part of a more veteran group — the quarterback coach spent more time focusing on fundamentals in Seattle during that offseason, and much of Smith’s time was devoted to helping Wilson develop a weekly routine. Smith is like any good coach, always trying to coach to and maximize his personnel. In Seattle, that meant breaking down read-option plays for Wilson while joking that Quinn would need a Red Sea-like parting of defenders to decide to pull the ball and run. "For any quarterback who is working with him, he’s going to allow them to play what they feel comfortable with," Quinn said. "But he’s also going to challenge them to try different stuff out." Once, Seattle quarterbacks discussed which foot a passer should use to make his first step away from pressure in the pocket. Some coaches say right, others say left — but Smith said it depends upon the situation. He then showed clips of quarterbacks using both feet to successfully take a step away from pressure, including Ben Roethlisberger on his game-winning touchdown pass in Super Bowl XLIII. "Most coaches are taught a certain way; they teach a certain way," Quinn said. "… You find guys are more rigid in what they’re being taught. (Smith is) unique in that sense. It allows you to free yourself." Smith at least knows how to develop an elite dual-threat quarterback. He just did so in Seattle. Wilson said he and Smith reviewed decades-old film, even picking out things they liked about Joe Montana’s game that could fit in the modern NFL. Other times, they’d rewatch games from Wilson’s rookie year. They had a tradition at the end of each season: Smith would give Wilson a cut-up of his good plays from that season, something to watch, study and feel good about, no matter how chaotic life as an NFL quarterback could feel. A few days after the Texans announced Smith’s hiring, Wilson FaceTimed his old coach, who said he was already working on making Watson’s highlight tape.
