DALLAS — Tyler Smith is relentless in the trenches.

“I’m somebody from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. You’re gonna have to see me,” Smith said.

His affinity for contact got him hooked on football at an early age.

“Doing the Oklahoma drill for the first time,” said the Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman. “I found out I was a person who could hit people, and I could hit people really hard.”

He put his pad popping to good use at North Crowley High School in Fort Worth. But after his sophomore season on varsity, Smith said something wasn’t right with his rapidly growing body.

“I was just feeling pain,” Smith said. “It was difficult to sprint, difficult to run, difficult to explode.”

He was diagnosed with Blount’s disease, a rare disorder that affects the growth plates in the shinbone.

“Instead of growing straight, it starts to grow in a more curved way, so that your leg becomes bowed out to the side,” said Dr. Lauren LaMont, who was one of Smith’s doctors at Cook Children’s Medical Center.

LaMont said the best option for Smith was to have his left leg intentionally broken, with pins inserted into the bone to help straighten his leg over a matter of months.

“It is not a light process,” Smith said about the procedure. “They rotate your bones back into place while you’re conscious. It’s actually some of the worst pain you can go through as a person.”

Smith got the surgery immediately following his junior season. Even with the long recovery, his high school coach said he was determined to play his senior year.

“He showed up every day. He crutched down there. He had the big cage brace on his leg and he got in that weight room,” said former North Crowley head coach Courtney Allen.

“It definitely taught me to just never take anything for granted,” Smith said. “And it really taught me that I can do anything I put my mind to.”

Smith was fully cleared to play just before his senior year, less than nine months after the procedure.

“Probably one of the greatest days of my life, because I understood from that day on things were different,” Smith said. “It was a starting point for me to show who I truly was.”

His mindset helped him become an All-American at the University of Tulsa, and then the Cowboys’ first-round draft pick in 2022.

“Some guys could change their demeanor, their attitude, their countenance, but he’s still the same guy that he was then, now,” said Allen, who’s now the head coach at Mesquite Horn High School. “He’s a good person, a humble person.”

The kid who got hooked on football by inflicting pain created a new perspective on the hardship he was able to endure.

“Just really understanding adversity, how strong the human body, how strong the human mind, how strong the human spirit can truly be,” Smith said. “It really set the foundation for my path up into college, to the NFL.”