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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
PITTSBURGH — Wearing a black puffer jacket and a black Pittsburgh Steelers-logoed beanie punctuated with a thick yellow stripe, Ryan Shazier hooks his arms through the straps of a red blocking pad and braces himself for impact.
One by one, Steelers running backs explode off the line in the team’s indoor practice facility, running forward until they meet and engage the first blocking pad of the drill. Then they shuffle sideways, put two hands on the pad and shove Shazier.
Nearly a decade ago, Shazier might have shoved back. Or maybe he would’ve deftly dodged the block attempt and rocketed toward the quarterback.
But this afternoon, Shazier absorbs every hit, staggering back a step or two with an uneven gait that’s a testament to modern medicine and hard work. Each time, Shazier quickly recovers and lumbers back to the starting position for the next player. That’s the job now.
Selected in the first round by the Steelers in 2014, neither Shazier nor the team who identified him as the next great linebacker in an organization defined by the position could’ve imagined this.
But a head-first collision with a Bengals wide receiver during “Monday Night Football” on Dec. 4, 2017 changed everything.
Seven years after suffering a career-ending and life-altering spinal cord injury, Shazier is carving out a new path forward in the sport that has given — and taken — so much.
Once the future of the Steelers’ linebacking corps and quarterback of the defense, Shazier is now helping equip running backs with the tools to thwart his former position as an offensive assistant, embarking on a journey he hadn’t considered when he was tracking quarterbacks and stuffing running backs.
“Honestly, I didn’t know [about coaching] because I was so focused on playing,” Shazier said. “I thought it was a blessing to play, and I just wanted to play as long as I could. I was going to let that happen down the road, but it wasn’t my first choice.”
Like so many roads in Pittsburgh, the one that led him back to the Steelers and a coaching career was winding and unpredictable. But on the cusp of completing his first coaching season, Shazier is once again adapting — and thriving — to a new way of life.
“He’s learning the separation between player and coach and what that looks like,” running backs coach Eddie Faulkner said. “I tease him all the time. I’m like, ‘You’re Ryan Shazier, but you’re trying to become coach Shazier.’ Those are two different ways that you got to move.
“But he wants to coach. You got to want to do it, because obviously the time that it requires. He puts his effort forward. He really wants to do it.”
THE DECISION TO return to the field wasn’t one Shazier took lightly.
Though he sustained his injury in 2017, Shazier wasn’t put on the NFL’s reserve/retired list until March 2020. During that span, Shazier maintained a locker in the practice facility and a spot on the roster on the reserve/physically unable to perform list. He was a fixture around the building as he continued rehab, often out on the field during practice or in the weight room. Remarkably, Shazier jogged for the first time 11 months after spinal fusion surgery and progressed to leaping box jumps five months later.
But as reality sunk in that resuming his playing career after a severe spinal injury wasn’t feasible and COVID-19 significantly restricted access to team facilities, Shazier officially announced his retirement in September 2020.
“To lose the game in a way I never envisioned has not been easy,” Shazier said then. “When you play the game of football the way I did, you convince yourself you’re Superman, that nothing can stop you. But then the moment I got hurt, I stopped being Superman. That was difficult to make sense.
“Some people fall in love with people [and] you get mad at them. But you know, you always make up — and that’s how I feel about the game of football.”
Next, Shazier needed time away. He tried his hand at a number of things over the next three years. He finished his degree at Ohio State, graduating in December 2020. He also contributed to a podcast, helped launch a medical marijuana brand and did work with his foundation, the Ryan Shazier Fund for Rehabilitation.
He liked experimenting with different ventures, but he couldn’t quiet the voice that called him back to the game.
“I wanted to see if I would enjoy other industries as much as I enjoyed football,” Shazier, 32, told ESPN in August. “I just tried out different things, and I ended up finding out the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”
That realization led him to coach Mike Tomlin’s office earlier this year. After adding Shazier on a tryout basis during OTAs and minicamp, Tomlin told his former player he had a season-long role on the 2024 coaching staff working with the running backs. Tomlin also added one of Shazier’s teammates, former linebacker Vince Williams, to a similar role on defense.
“Ryan has a unique relationship with this game,” Tomlin told mentor Tony Dungy in an October interview. “He has a passion for it, he has a thirst for knowledge regarding the game that he loves to share with others. He did that as a player. He has all the tools to be a really good coach, man, and I’m just excited to be a part of that component of his continued relationship with the game.”
With a new perspective on life and the game, Shazier began penning his next chapter at training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania — the same place he began his NFL playing career a decade earlier.
“It took me that time to get into this because I needed that space to be able to evaluate if this is the right place for me to be right now,” Shazier said, standing on the sideline at camp. “Right now, it don’t really bother me being here, understanding guys making money and seeing what guys can do. A little bit because I’m a little older, but also the fact that I got past that. But when I first got injured, certain parts of me wasn’t ready yet.”
RUNNING BACK JONATHAN WARD was surprised the first time he saw Shazier with the running backs. Not because there was a former linebacker in an offensive meeting room, but because it was the Ryan Shazier.
“Steelers legend,” Ward said. “Ohio State legend. It was just surreal seeing him in person, and then of course what he’s been through. It was just admirable seeing him out there and still around the game of football, doing what he loves to do.
“Being a former player, a defensive player, he probably knows everything there is to know on the defensive side of the ball. So to hone in his game and to make him the most well-rounded coach possible, it just makes sense for him to be on the offensive side to learn that side of the football after playing on the opposing side for so many years.”
Even though Shazier has learned to expect the unexpected from his former coach over the past decade, he didn’t anticipate Tomlin assigning him to an offensive role.
“I was surprised, but also not surprised, because when it comes to coach Tomlin — and you just never know whatever he’s going to do — I feel like he always makes the right decision,” Shazier said. “At first, I was a little nervous, and even to this day I’m still a little nervous because it’s literally every single day I’m learning.”
Shazier’s relationship with the offense is mutually beneficial. Having a former linebacker work with the team’s running backs is almost like giving them an answer key to their weekly test. And it’s not just any person giving them the answers, it’s someone who sat in meeting rooms down the hall, who wore the same uniform and was part of three AFC North-winning teams.
“He’s got freedom in the meeting to speak up on things,” Faulkner said. “Guys will turn and ask him questions, ‘Hey, what’s [Elandon Roberts] doing on this? Why did they do that?’ And it might be something that we’re sitting there talking about that [the defense] may have messed up and he’s like, ‘Oh, they screwed that one up.’ And so that part of it offers a different vantage point that normally we don’t get.”
Shazier isn’t just learning a new side of the ball, he’s also learning a new way of life as a coach. He is far from the first former player to enter the coaching ranks, but navigating that transition can still be tricky.
“It’s so fun,” outside linebackers coach Denzel Martin said of Shazier’s evolution. “He went from the top of the food chain, now he’s back at the bottom.
“He’s a [quality control]. He gets to do breakdowns. He gets to do all the stuff that’s not glorified anymore. He’s doing a great job at it, whatever you ask him to do. He fits right in. I told him he’s an offensive guy now, so he’s falling right in line. We love him.”
AS A PLAYER, Shazier thought he was one step ahead, arriving early to practice, getting in extra lifts, watching hours of tape.
He laughs about that now.
“That’s the difference in a coach and a player,” he said. “You have to always kind of be a few steps ahead. As a player, you think you’re a step ahead, but the coaches are always a few more.”
The job description for a quality control analyst is a hodgepodge of behind-the-scenes responsibilities.
“All the work that you don’t glorify, that’s the QCs,” said Martin, who spent time in the role early in his coaching career. “You just got to learn to love it and live in the background.”
Before individual periods at the start of practice, Shazier’s tasks can include arranging orange cones for agility drills or dragging tackling dummies into place. Once those are set up, Shazier might wield a boxing glove on a stick to punch the ball away or simulate contact by thumping running backs with giant blocking pads.
And in team periods, Shazier not only works with the offense, but he also helps out coordinator Danny Smith with special teams.
“He was a good special team guy, and he was very successful there,” practice squad running back Aaron Shampklin said. “Having somebody to be able to ask questions and they give you how they did things is — literally, I mean, you can’t get that anywhere else.”
On game days, Shazier has a spot in the coaching box with other assistants and spends games meticulously charting plays.
Shazier is in the infancy of his coaching career, but like everything else in his life, he aspires to greatness.
“I’m just taking it day by day,” he said. “But in my vision, I would love to be a head coach down the road.
“Every time I strive for something, I always try to strive to be the best and go to the top. So I’m just going to take it one day at a time and hopefully I can get it.”