The jobs might not be glamorous. Special teams coach and special teams ace. But they are essential. Those are the roles Danny Smith and Miles Killebrew have shared together for the last five years. Right now, only one of them is healthy enough to do the job; Killebrew is out for the season due to a knee injury. Not too long ago, it was Smith on the mend. And it makes for one of Killebrew’s favorite stories of his coach.
“Fans might remember when he got absolutely demolished on the sideline, right?” Killebrew told the PPG’s Brian Batko in a recent interview. “He just got completely taken out there on the sideline. He ended up messing up his shoulders pretty bad. He required surgery immediately.
“And he didn’t get the surgery. He was like, I’m not gonna get no surgery. I’m not gonna miss even a second of this time on the field, in the meetings.”
The incident occurred in 2023 when a scrum between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers broke out after S Damontae Kazee’s game-clinching interception. Smith was caught in the crossfire and was only saved by TE Rodney Williams pulling him out of the pile. But the damage to Smith’s shoulders was done.
Smith, though, didn’t follow the doctor’s orders. He finished out the year before getting the surgery done.
“He is addicted, dude, to watching film and to being in that office and to doing, trying to find any edge he can to put us in a place of victory,” Killebrew said. “And so for the rest of the year, he’s trying to show us how to take on certain things. And he can’t even lift his arm above his belly button. I’m like, ‘Danny, what are we doing, coach?’”
Nor did Smith move from his usual spot on the edge of the sideline. Killebrew says Smith didn’t change his gameday approach, not wanting to miss a moment of the action.
As Smith would tell it later that year, he tore his rotator cuff in three spots. It was the second such injury of his coaching career after breaking his leg serving as an assistant at Georgia Tech in 1993. Neither slowed him down.
Nor has age. Having just turned 72, Smith is one of football’s oldest coaches. But coaching is what he’s done for well more than half of his career, and he’s shown no signs of slowing down or hanging up his whistle – or stop chewing his gum. Pittsburgh’s special teams have largely done well this season, with K Chris Boswell having another excellent year and the coverage units preventing big plays. Smith also went viral with a big-brained kickoff out of bounds to secure excellent field position.
A free agent after the year with months of rehab still ahead, Killebrew will look to re-sign and return in 2026. Smith will surely vouch for him.
