The NFL moves fast enough that most people already forgot what happened to Braden Smith two years ago. He was a starting right tackle for the Indianapolis Colts, a 2018 second-round pick who had turned himself into the league’s highest-paid player at his position back in 2021. Then, late in the 2024 season, he stopped playing. Five games left, and he was done. Placed on the non-football illness list. No injury. No public explanation at the time.
He explained it later himself. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Not a mild case. He called it debilitating.
On March 10, Smith signed a two-year, $25 million deal with the Houston Texans, including $13.5 million fully guaranteed. He is 29 years old, coming off a 13-game season that showed he is back. The Texans are betting he is all the way back. That bet looks well-reasoned.
What He Went Through
OCD is one of the more misunderstood conditions in mental health. Most people hear the acronym and think of someone who likes things neat. The clinical reality is different. Debilitating OCD can involve intrusive thoughts, compulsive rituals that consume hours of a person’s day, and an anxiety cycle that makes it nearly impossible to function in demanding professional environments.
Smith chose to be public about his diagnosis after returning. He did not have to do that. Plenty of NFL players have quietly dealt with mental health challenges, taken time away, and never said a word about what kept them off the field. Smith spoke about it openly, which required a different kind of courage than anything that happens on a football field.
He came back in 2025 and started 13 games at right tackle for the Colts. The OCD did not end his career. It interrupted it. There is a meaningful difference between those two things, and Smith made sure that difference was understood.
The Player He Has Always Been
Before any of this, Smith was one of the better offensive tackles in the AFC. He started from Day 1 as a rookie in 2018. He earned that record-setting extension in 2021. He appeared in 107 games during his career, starting 105 of them. That is the kind of durability that tells you something about a player’s professionalism and body management, separate from any specific season’s statistics.
His value was always tied to run blocking. The Colts built one of the better rushing offenses in the league during his peak years, and Jonathan Taylor’s most productive stretches came behind an offensive line that Smith anchored on the right side. Teams pay right tackles significant money when they pass protect. They pay them even more when they can do both. Smith could always do both.
Last season, even with 13 starts instead of a full 17, he was part of a Colts line that helped Taylor put together a strong year before the team’s quarterback injuries destabilized the offense in the final stretch. The skills that made him the league’s highest-paid right tackle in 2021 did not disappear during his time away. They were waiting for him on the other side of the hardest thing he has ever dealt with.
What He Means for Houston
The Texans have been active and deliberate about rebuilding their offensive line around second-year quarterback CJ Stroud. They re-signed Trent Brown. They added guard Ed Ingram. They traded Tytus Howard to Cleveland and Juice Scruggs to Detroit, clearing space and picking up resources to reinvest. Smith represents the kind of experienced, proven anchor that a young franchise quarterback needs on the blind side of his protection.
At two years and $25 million, this is not an expensive gamble. It is a measured investment in a player whose physical abilities have never been the question. The Texans are asking whether Smith is healthy and stable enough to give them 30-plus starts over the next two seasons. The evidence from 2025 suggests the answer is yes.
Smith will walk into Houston’s facility having already answered the hardest question of his career. Everything else, the pass sets, the run fits, the communication with his linemen, those things he has been doing at a high level for eight years. He just needed to get back to the place where he could do them again.
He got there. The Texans noticed.