Bucs special teams coach Danny Smith.

As Joe has typed already, this new Bucs special teams coach Danny Smith is a character.

Smith, 72, comes from the Steelers where he had pretty good success. He’s a football lifer. He coached Dan Marino in high school! Smith was also on the same coaching staff as Chucky in Philadelphia when Chucky was the Eagles offensive coordinator.

Smith has been bouncing around college and NFL football for decades.

Guys who are 72, most move to Florida to golf year-round and loaf before they move to God’s waiting room, not to work. So Smith was asked why he’s still at it in football.

“I don’t know anything, but I need competition and preparation,” Smith said. “I need it. I need it in my life.

“I need competition and preparation, and that’s why I do it. And I love it. And I love this gig.”

While Bucs fans grumble about the apparent direction of the team, Smith made it clear to the local pen and mic club this week that around the league, the Bucs are looked upon as a class organization.

Smith said he feels the winning attitude at One Buc Palace.

“I’m gonna tell you, this organization has done a great job with the culture,” Smith said. “I’m just telling you, I’ve been on a few of these teams.

“I’ve been in several organizations and none of them [have] been bad. But what has been very impressive to me here is from the top down, really from ownership to administration to coaches, the culture that is here is special. And I feel it. And I’m proud to be a part of it.

“The attendance in [OTA] sessions like this with all the things that these young men have in their lives today, as you well know, as long as some of you have been covering this stuff, to have everybody in attendance like that here is not natural.

“It’s a culture that’s been developed again through ownership, through administration, through coaching staff. I’m excited to be a part of it. I really am. And I respect the hell out of it.”

And lastly, Smith touched upon leaders. He said losing Mike Evans and Lavonte David will be a big hit to the team. Asked who will replace them, Smith said the players will tell coaches.

Smith made it clear that anyone declaring a player a leader or a player bragging he’s a leader is a crock.

“Anytime you come to an organization and you drive by the stadium and the two murals on the stadium are the two guys that left, tells you a lot,” Smith said. “OK, you don’t need to be no rocket scientist to figure that out. So that’s a big loss. …

“Leadership is not appointed. Leadership is anointed by their teammates. OK, you can’t just appoint a leader and think it’s going to work. It just don’t work like that.

“Leadership is anointed by the teammates. So we’ll see who those leaders become, who our teammates will follow. And I think that’s in a development process when you lose two guys like [David and Evans]. But I think we’ll be fine.”

Joe could listen to Smith talk all day.

When Smith entered what the Bucs call “the studio,” where most of the coaches and players take the podium, Smith didn’t want to do it. He just wanted to sit with the reporters and talk like people hanging out at Dunkin Donuts.

But Smith had to take the podium for video purposes and he didn’t like it. “Too formal for me,” he said, and the first thing he did was push aside the microphone, which Joe knows infuriated the Bucs’ video production people. Smith then leaned over the podium so that he’d get out of the glare of the TV klieglights.

As he finished, he remarked that he recently had a dental appointment and standing up at the podium under the klieglights gave him flashbacks to being in the dentist chair.