ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Six months into her job as a Buffalo Bills assistant coach, and Kathryn Smith already is spinning out bromides like the long snapper she helps mentor.

Named in January by head coach Rex Ryan as the NFL’s first full-time female assistant coach, the 31-year-old Smith on Wednesday provided her first on-the-job update following the Bills’ second-last practice of the spring at mandatory mini-camp.

As fast as the local press could throw questions at her, Smith adroitly and calmly replied with polite but not very revealing answers. Talk about a coaching prodigy!

For instance, does Smith hold aspirations about some day becoming an NFL head coach?

“Right now, my goal is to get to training camp, get to the season and just try to help the team as much as I can — and take it one game at a time, one week at a time, and take it from there,” Smith said.

And that wasn’t the first time her Don’t Reveal Anything Coach-Speak Meter redlined.

Earlier I asked Smith if, being in an environment full of alpha males (up to 90 players, plus a few dozen coaches, trainers, doctors, equipment personnel, scouts and front-office execs), she finds herself sensing that they all walk on eggshells around her. So as not to say or do anything she’d find offensive.

“They’re just being themselves,” Smith said.

Another reporter followed up, asking if she ever has to tell them to just relax and be themselves, or if she has sensed or noticed that they treat her differently.

“I haven’t, because I haven’t sensed that,” she said. “So I haven’t had that situation arise.”

OK then. After eight years of being around Ryan, you’d think maybe she’d have adopted just a smidgen of his bluster. Nope.

She's the first female NFL assistant coach, but it's all business for Kathryn Smith.



WATCH: https://t.co/8kIjUAtVfApic.twitter.com/T5O1TIpdF9 — Buffalo Bills (@buffalobills) June 15, 2016

Both in 2014 (in Ryan’s last season of six as head coach of the New York Jets) and in 2015 (his first in Buffalo), Smith served as “assistant to the head coach.” She spent 12 seasons in all with the Jets, first as a game-day/special-events intern in 2003. In 2005 she was promoted to college scouting intern, then in 2007 to player personnel assistant.

In the NFL, “quality control” assistant coaches essentially are organizational assistants, but they also help coordinators and other assistant coaches above them — on offence, defence or special teams — with the actual coaching of players.

Smith specifically is aiding Bills special-teams coordinator Danny Crossman and his assistant coach, Eric Smith. She described her duties during this week’s three-day mandatory mini-camp as follows:

“It’s meeting prep, prepping for practice. We’ll go in and watch tape this afternoon and then get ready for tomorrow again in the morning, get ready for the meetings and practice cards and all that kind of stuff. Once the season gets here, we’ll see what that brings.”

At that point, will she help with breaking down film of opponents, and of the Bills themselves?

“Probably some of both,” Smith said.

The most appreciable change from her previous football scouting and admin jobs, she said, is “just more time 1-on-1, kind of, with the players — more time on the field, in the meeting rooms a little bit more than I had been in the past.”

Ryan assured the world in naming Smith to her post in January that it was no token appointment.

“She certainly deserves this promotion based on her knowledge and strong commitment, just to name a couple of her outstanding qualities,” Ryan said then. “She has proven that she’s ready for the next step.”

On a football team, as everywhere, respect is earned. That fact is not lost on Smith, who discussed her personal approach with players.

“Because I (already knew) them, and they know me, I think some of that was already established. I didn’t really want to overstep my bounds or anything. I’m trying to learn. I think they see that I’m working hard and trying to learn everything and do everything as best I can. So I think, through that, they see that.”

Asked a few ways to discuss how she feels about blazing another important, overdue trail for women in sports, Smith again didn’t reveal too much. Such as about when the full weight of the appointment finally sunk in as a tame Buffalo winter inched along.

“It started to sink in but, again,” she said, “that wasn’t really my focus. I was just trying to work hard. I mean, I recognize, obviously, that it’s a big deal but I was just trying to get to work.

“I suppose, yes, there is (something to being the NFL’s first female coach). But that’s not really what I’m focused on … I recognize the honour in it, but I’m just trying to help the team and be the best coach that I can.”

And, yes, she did receive congratulations back in January from all kinds of people, including national celebrities.

“It was surprising. It was exciting. It was pretty neat,” she said.

Was there one celeb who reached out that really wowed her?

“No one that I’m going to mention, I guess,” she said, in batting away yet another probing attempt.

Smith has found her calling.

Email: JoKryk@postmedia.com

Twitter: @JohnKryk