Since the turn of the last decade, there have been few, if any, Kansas City Chiefs who have managed to appear on a routine basis in the way that Patrick Mahomes has, but Trey Smith may be one of them. Since his rookie debut in 2021, the two-time Pro Bowler and two-time Super Bowl champion lineman has only missed six starts, making him one of the unsung heroes of the NFL’s latest dynasty.
Advertisement
Casual fans outside of Chiefs Kingdom likely aren’t very familiar with the former sixth-round draft pick, nor his harrowing story about how his NFL dreams almost came to an end before they had even started. During what should have been a routine offseason training session for him at the University of Tennessee, Smith noted that he suddenly felt like he was “dying.”
“I can’t stand up straight. I can barely catch my breath. I’m like ‘Damn. Am I that out of shape? What is going on?’ …I lost 13 pounds in a day. I feel horrible… I remember getting that call. The team doctor was like ‘Hey, man. Wherever you are at, stay right there. We’re going to rush you to the hospital.'”
Within the next few hours of that phone call, Smith would be officially diagnosed with blood clots in not just one but both of his lungs. In recalling the instance in which the doctor informed him that “they can be fatal,” the former Volunteer ultimately noted that it was “good that we caught them when we caught them,” but even that bit of good news was still undercut by the fact that his case was still deemed to be a rather severe one.
Nevertheless, that still didn’t deter him from pursuing his goal of making it to the NFL. “I just remember thinking at the time, almost ignorantly, like ‘Will I still be able to play football?'” he admitted. “Like, what’s my timeline for getting back?”
Although Smith did also admit that once the doctor had reiterated the gravity of the situation to him, he immediately began to come back and start to realize just how serious things could become for him. Thankfully, for both his own sake and that of the Chiefs, he was able to make a full recovery, and there were no health issues to be found by the time that the franchise selected him with the 226th overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
The rest, as they say, is history. Smith has since managed to blossom into a consecutive Pro Bowler following his 2024 and 2025 nominations, and he even secured himself a four-year, $94-million extension last summer.
At the time, that deal was enough to make him the highest-paid guard in all of professional football, and given the amount of production that he’s been able to churn out in Kansas City, as well as the adversity that he was forced to overcome before he even entered the league, it’s impossible to argue that Smith isn’t deserving of each and every last penny.
