KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With perfect posture, the big man stands on the sideline, right hand over his heart.

The national anthem plays and Chiefs guard Trey Smith looks like he’s in a dream. A tear rolls down his cheek.

As the song concludes, fans at Arrowhead Stadium replace the final word. “And the home of the CHIEFS!”

“That,” Chiefs center Creed Humphrey says, “fires him up.”

Then with the smoke from fireworks still in the air, the game begins and Smith hits with such force and intensity that he could create sparks.

“On that first drive, he’s looking to send a message,” Humphrey says. “He’s putting people on the ground and letting them know it’s going to be a physical game.”

The passion is remarkable and rare.

Where does it come from?

It was destined that Trey Smith would be a Pro Bowler and Super Bowl champion. But he can’t stop thinking it almost didn’t happen.

When Trey was 5, he decided he wanted to be a football player. But as a self-described “fat kid,” he knew he had to be a certain kind of football player. So he hit his knees every night and prayed he would grow to 6-foot-5.

It was a tall order, given that height did not run in his family. His father, Henry Jr., stood between 6-1 and 6-2. His mother, Dorsetta, was 5-6, and his only sibling, sister Ashley, is 5-6.

By the time Trey was 12, he was close to his current height of 6-5 1/2, his prayers answered and then some.

He was unusually strong, too, partly because of how he spent his weekends. His grandfather owned a farm in Bethel Springs, Tenn., and Trey helped as a farmhand.

In eighth grade, Trey was invited to a football camp at Mississippi. There, Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze offered him his first college scholarship. Trey and Dorsetta laughed at the offer, thinking Freeze was kidding, but it was no joke.

It wasn’t long before other universities followed Mississippi’s lead — Tennessee, Clemson, Georgia, Alabama, Notre Dame and on and on.

Artis Hicks played offensive line in the NFL for 11 seasons, and his first NFL coach was Andy Reid. His patio overlooked the field where Trey’s team practiced. When Trey was a sophomore in high school, he and Henry approached Hicks after a Sunday service at Love & Truth Church in Jackson, Tenn., wanting to know if Hicks would train Trey.

Hicks knew most kids didn’t have the mental fortitude to be worth his time. He agreed to put him through a workout, but it wasn’t what Trey expected — he took him on a run of nearly five miles.

“I wanted to see if I could break him,” Hicks says.

As they parted, Hicks thought he had heard the last of Trey. That evening, however, Trey texted asking if they could work out again the next day.

“Automatically, I knew I had something because he had the size already,” Hicks says. “Once I realized he wasn’t afraid to be uncomfortable, I literally opened up and dumped everything I had in me into him.”

Hicks took Trey to the gym after school where they lifted and conditioned. He taught him NFL techniques that he learned in Philadelphia from his line coach Juan Castillo and his teammates Jon Runyan, Hank Fraley and Jermane Mayberry. After high school games, and even sometimes during games, Hicks provided coaching tips.

Trey was thriving on the field when Dorsetta was hospitalized with congestive heart failure. He visited her in the intensive care unit at Vanderbilt Medical Center in early 2015. She was intubated and could not speak, but he had something he needed to say before it was too late.

He wanted his mom to know that he would graduate college and play in the NFL. He promised.

Dorsetta, at 51, died shortly after.

Trey Smith, left, with sister Ashley, mother Dorsetta and father Henry, lost his mother when he was 15. (Courtesy of the Smith family)

Not knowing how to let go of someone who means so much, 15-year-old Trey buried his grief in sport.

“He channeled the sadness and frustration and released it through football,” Ashley says. “Losing her motivated him to honor her legacy and fulfill his promise.”

As his sorrow grew deeper, his play became fiercer and his star brighter.

“He became like an alien on the field,” Hicks says. “He was a dog, he was skilled, he was technical and he was athletic. He didn’t look like anybody else in the nation.”

ESPN named him the No. 1 prospect in the country and Trey, with roughly 40 scholarship offers, announced his decision to attend Tennessee live on ESPN. A marquee in New York’s Times Square proclaimed the news.

After his freshman season, he was voted second-team All-SEC and was on his way to fulfilling his promise.

Then, in a practice after his first season, he passed out. In the coming days, he lost strength and weight. Trey was diagnosed with blood clots in both lungs.

He took anticoagulants for most of the offseason and was cleared to play but was told if there was a recurrence, he’d have to give up football. Everything was fine until a practice six games into his sophomore season when he couldn’t catch his breath. Tests indicated the blood clots were back.

All he had prayed for, dreamed of and promised seemed unattainable.

“I fell into a depression,” he says. “I felt like I didn’t have any worth. In my eyes, I failed my mom because I couldn’t keep the promises I made to her.”

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Lying in a hospital bed, Trey wondered why football had been taken away from him. That’s when Hicks called. They talked about what Trey’s future without playing might look like, and Hicks offered to put him in touch with friends who might help him get on a coaching path.

They hung up and Hicks stepped into the shower. It was there, he says, he had a vision.

“I saw him going on to becoming what he is now,” Hicks says. “And this would just be the beginning, that this would be a platform he uses to touch lives and glorify God.”

Hicks called him back.

“God didn’t bring you this far to let you down,” Hicks told him.

Trey believed him.

Shortly after, on New Year’s Eve 2019, Trey drove his GMC Sierra to Knoxville from their home in Jackson. The song “Something About The Name Jesus” by The Rance Allen Group played.

And then he had a vision of his own. It was his future, in shoulder pads.

He called Ashley, who is almost nine years older than him, and told her God told him he would continue playing football.

With his university providing the financial support and Henry and Ashley providing the emotional, he saw specialists at Cleveland Clinic, Harvard and Vanderbilt. Some of the testing cast doubts on whether he had blood clots.

He traveled to the University of North Carolina Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center, where Dr. Stephan Moll suggested an experimental plan. Trey couldn’t take anticoagulants while playing because an injury could cause uncontrollable bleeding. But Moll thought he could try intermittent dosing — taking blood thinners during the week while avoiding all contact drills in practice, then coming off the medication the day before the game.

Before the season opener, Trey was nervous.

“What if I go out there and get a concussion or something?” he wondered. “Am I going to die on the field?”

Trey Smith was voted All-SEC three times at Tennessee but wasn’t picked until the sixth round of the NFL Draft. (Kim Klement / USA Today)

A friend texted him the Bible verse Jeremiah 29:11. Trey read it and said it over and over the day of the game. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you, and not to harm you.”

He eventually returned to doing what he had always done — making defenders go where they didn’t want to. That year, without ever practicing, he was voted first-team All-SEC. Trey maintained the routine as a senior and thrived on the field, being voted all-conference for a third time.

After his senior season, he was one of 10 student-athletes chosen for “The Big Orange Combine,” which provides behind-the-scenes experiences at major sporting events. That year, the destination was Super Bowl LVI in South Florida.

During the game, some Tennessee fans recognized him as he was serving as an usher/greeter and asked if he wanted to sit with them in an open seat. Trey watched as Patrick Mahomes led the Chiefs from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to a 31-20 victory over the 49ers. He heard the Chiefs chant and wondered what it would be like to wear that red and gold.

Trey had recently graduated from Tennessee, fulfilling half of what he promised his mother. But at the time, Trey’s NFL future was uncertain. Many scouts thought he had the qualities of a first-round pick. Many general managers thought he had the medical records of a reject.

ESPN sent a camera to his house for the first round — the round he thought he would be taken in. When he wasn’t picked, ESPN returned for Rounds 2 and 3. Trey stayed out of sight, playing Rocket League in his bedroom.

The network wanted to be with him for the third day of the draft, but Trey and his family, fearing the worst, declined their request. As the rounds passed, Trey “freaked out,” in his words, thinking he wasn’t destined for the NFL after all. He questioned himself. Was he good enough? Did he play well enough to justify a team taking a risk? Did he do all he could have to put himself in the best position he could have?

After 225 players had been chosen, the Chiefs picked Trey in the sixth round.

By his first training camp practice, he was running with the first team. He didn’t have any of the usual rookie homesickness, given some of the friendly faces around him. He and Humphrey, the team’s second-round pick that year, had been tight since they met at an Arkansas football camp when they were high school freshmen.

That summer, the Chiefs began the Norma Hunt Player Personnel Fellowship Program. Ashley had worked in various roles at Tennessee when Trey was there, starting as executive assistant to the head coach and ending up as assistant athletic director for football. She applied for the fellowship with the Chiefs without telling anyone who her brother was.

Chiefs general manager Brett Veach interviewed her in a video conference. Veach told her she was overqualified and asked if she was sure she wanted the position, which entailed watching tape, onboarding, offboarding and transporting players. Ashley wanted the job, and she surprised the general manager by telling him if he picked her, she wouldn’t be the only member of the family he chose that offseason.

After spending training camp with the Chiefs and her brother, Ashley became a player engagement manager for the NFL. Trey, meanwhile, was voted to the all-rookie team.

Siblings Ashley and Trey Smith both joined the Chiefs in 2021. Ashley now works for the NFL. (Kyle Rivas / Getty Images for Hallmark Media)

Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has called the 328-pounder “the enforcer” of the offense. NFL Network analyst and former guard Brian Baldinger goes further.

“When you’re looking at the best guards in the NFL, do they get any better than Trey Smith?” he asked in a video posted on X.

In Trey’s second year, the Chiefs ran a screen pass in Denver. When linebacker Josey Jewell tried to shoot the A gap, Trey, with a cross-body swat from his right arm, gave him a taste of the dirt. Then Trey sprinted straight at safety Justin Simmons, obliterated him and cleared the space for running back Jerick McKinnon to take the ball into the end zone.

In subsequent seasons when the Chiefs have installed the play, they have shown that clip, which invariably has gotten an enthusiastic reaction from Trey’s teammates. “It’s always fun to watch it,” Humphrey says.

Trey finds inspiration watching tape of guards known for pushing the boundaries, such as Richie Incognito, Ryan Jensen and Quenton Nelson.

“I want to play the game with bad intentions but within the confines of the rulebook,” he says. “I play to be violent and to release my emotions.”

He tied for the team lead in snaps this season and in his career has missed only one game because of injury out of 78. He has not taken blood thinners for the most part since he’s been in the league, and he hasn’t had any more clots.

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Chiefs fans have taken to him, understandably, and he feels like an adopted son of Kansas City.

Trey and Humphrey recently used their collective force to push a car out of a snow bank after a Sunday morning church service in town.

On a shelf in his downtown apartment is an impressive collection of bottles of barbeque sauce — enough sauce, it seems, to fill a hot tub. A plaque commemorating his championship in a wings-eating contest hangs on the wall. A tray of burnt ends is on the countertop.

In some ways, he is the quintessential Chief.

But he might not be for long. Trey’s rookie contract will expire after the season. Pro Football Focus rates him as the No. 2 upcoming free agent at any position. The expectation is the 25-year-old will become the highest-paid guard in the league. The question is who will be writing the checks?

The lens he looks through is more fisheye than telephoto, so Trey says he is less concerned about where free agency may lead than he is about his next snap, his next opponent and the opportunity to three-peat.

But it’s in the back of his mind. Trey would like a family someday and contemplates how money could enable future generations. He also thinks about opportunities to make an impact philanthropically and inspirationally.

It’s not as if he’s planning to buy a yacht or a jet.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he says. “I’m just a country boy from Tennessee and there’s not a whole lot I necessarily want. I just need a little land where there is quiet space.”

He may have that already. He and Ashley, who are believed to be the only brother and sister ever employed by the NFL, inherited their grandfather’s 150-acre farm. It’s been vacant for nearly a decade, and he plans to clear the land and use the property for turkey hunting and off-roading.

It’s a dream he does not take for granted. He doesn’t take anything for granted. How could he?

The Chiefs trailed the 49ers late in Super Bowl LVIII last February, as they had in the Super Bowl that Trey attended when he was in college. He could do something about it this time, and he did, throwing dominating blocks that helped the Chiefs win in overtime.

After, as his teammates hugged and ran around like little boys, he sat in the end zone alone, helmet by his side.

Trey Smith cried. But he didn’t cry the way he cries before the national anthem. This was sobbing, chest-heaving crying — very wet and loud.

It all came back to him.

Praying to be 6-5.

His promise.

Blood clots.

The phone call from Hicks.

The vision in his car.

Trips to medical centers across the country.

Jeremiah 29:11.

Playing without practicing.

Panic during the draft.

All his mother missed.

“To be so far down and to experience all of this,” he says, pausing, wiping his eye and taking a deep breath. “It just shows God’s grace.”

(Top photo: Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)