Exit Meeting: S Miles Killebrew
Experience: 10 Years
A 10th-year veteran with five years served with the Steelers, Miles Killebrew’s tenure in Pittsburgh ended with a whimper. Or an injury, rather, as he tore his ACL five games into the 2025 season. The Steelers’ special teams captain and highly respected in the locker room, he set the culture for those units.
Drafted by the Lions in 2016, Killebrew’s responsibilities always leaned heavily toward special teams. Even as a rookie, he logged over 300 snaps there, something he has done seven times now in his career. Over five seasons—one shortened to just five games—in Pittsburgh, he logged 1,328 special teams snaps. In contrast, he played all of 177 defensive snaps—only nine the past two years.
Across 73 games, Miles Killebrew recorded 61 tackles for the Steelers, the bulk of them coming on special teams, of course. He made the Pro Bowl as a special teamer in 2023 and 2024 and first-team All-Pro in 2023. One figures he would have made the Pro Bowl again in 2025 had he not gotten injured. Considering another Steelers player, Ben Skowronek, replaced him, it seems like a safe guess.
But his contract expired after the 2025 season, and with Mike Tomlin resigning, change seemed inevitable. Killebrew followed longtime Steelers special teams coordinator Danny Smith, who left Pittsburgh for the Buccaneers following Tomlin’s resignation. So while he is on a new team, he has great familiarity with his new coach.
As far as the Steelers go, they are developing a new core of special teamers. 2025 rookies Jack Sawyer and Carson Bruener are in that group now, along with Payton Wilson and Skowronek. This offseason, they added Travis Homer, who should have a key special teams role, as well. Along with Miles Killebrew, however, they also lost Connor Heyward, James Pierre, and Kenneth Gainwell. They also have not re-signed Jabrill Peppers or Chuck Clark, who logged a lot of special teams snaps. And guys like Jaquan Brisker, Darnell Savage, and Michael Pittman Jr. aren’t going to fill the gaps.
The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves licking their wounds after yet another early playoff exit. This is a repeated pattern for the organization, but with major change coming. As the Steelers conduct their own exit meetings, we will go down the roster conducting our own. Who should stay, and who should go, and how? Who should expect a bigger role next season, and who might deserve a new contract? The resignation of Mike Tomlin makes those questions much more difficult to answer, but much more important. We’ll explore those questions and more in these articles, part of an annual series.