Often, projects need a strong guiding hand. And that strong guiding hand doesn't necessarily need to be someone with massive amounts of domain knowledge or skills to rival the most technical people on a team. They need organizational skills, focus, and the ability to step back and see the bigger picture.
I was involved in a project that was literally going nowhere. Every sprint failed, the team was all over the place, and the project was way behind schedule. The company moved a project manager in from another team. She had a background in engineering and some experience coding, but not to the level of most of the team. Yet after six weeks (3 sprints), the project was back on track. Mainly because that project manager go the team to better focus on what needed to be done, and what could be done, during their sprints.
None of that required domain knowledge or deep technical skills, but it did show me the true worth of a good project manager.