Smith was limited to 12 starts in 2025 after suffering high- and low-ankle sprains late in the season, interrupting what had been one of the league's best durability profiles through four regular seasons and Kansas City's extended playoff runs. When available, Smith remained one of football's premier interior enforcers, pairing prototypical guard size with elite competitive toughness, heavy hands and immense raw power. His run-game value is rooted in displacement, strain and tone-setting physicality, with the ability to dent fronts and overwhelm defenders when his leverage is right. The most encouraging development was his pass protection, where his hand usage looked as balanced and controlled as it has been in his career. Smith found a better mix of patience and force on his creep-sets, using his heavy outside hand to initiate contact without overextending against wider alignments. That allowed him to play with cleaner posture, protect his edges and maintain better positional leverage against top interior competition such as Zach Allen, Jalen Carter and Jeffery Simmons. Smith can still tighten his strike-timing to protect his frame and find his anchor more quickly, but his 2025 film reinforced a complete, high-end guard profile whose only real caveat was availability.