Steelers Expand Coaching Staff with New Hire
The Pittsburgh Steelers have expanded their coaching staff by adding Luke Smith as a quality control coach. Smith is the nephew of longtime Steelers special teams coach Danny Smith.
Luke Smith, who’s a Pittsburgh native, coached at Duquesne for the last eight years. He had multiple roles during his tenure with the Dukes, working as a defensive assistant from 2016 to 2017 and then as a wide receivers coach since 2018. He also held the title of director of operations with the Dukes.
During his time at Duquense, Smith helped coach the Dukes to three Northeast Conference championships (co-2016, co-2018, 2023) and a pair of NCAA FCS Playoff appearances (2018, 2023). The Dukes had a receiver ranked in the top three in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns in five of the six seasons under Smith.
Steelers team president Art Rooney II was rather blunt during his season-ending press conference about the Steelers’ having one of the smallest coaching staffs in the NFL. He thinks the staff’s size is the least of the team’s problems.
“I don’t see that holding us back,” Rooney said. “I don’t think that’s a problem.”
Rooney said the Steelers have 27 coaches on their staff, but the on-field number of coaches listed in the team’s media guide is only 19. Rooney may be counting unlisted coaches like former Steelers linebackers Vince Williams and Ryan Shazier, who worked with the team’s defensive line and running backs this season, as well as the strength and conditioning staff.
The Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders have 23 coaches each, while the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs each have 22. The Eagles and Chiefs played in Super Bowl LXI, while the Commanders and Bills made it to the conference championship game. So, there is a correlation of success for teams with larger staffs.
“I remember sitting in a quarterback meeting room at the Pro Bowl. And you had the quarterback coach, and there were two or three other coaches in there. And I’m like, they’re coaches. This is unbelievable,” former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast when discussing the size of the Steelers’ coaching staff. “And so I think there’s definitely room for that, but the team has to decide they want to do that.”
Rooney did mention that the team would look into expanding the coaching staff, but he didn’t see it as a hot-button issue.
“I wouldn’t dismiss anything other than maybe a bigger coaching staff. I’m not sure that’s the answer. Our coaching staff has grown and that’s a similar size for staff around the League,” Rooney said. “I don’t think we’re outliers in that regard. On the analytic side, we have invested on that side and got more people in that department than we have ever had, but we look at opportunities and technology changes. We’ll have the opportunity to give ourselves better resources on that front, and we’ll certainly look at it.”