For the second year in a row, offensive tackle Braden Smith won’t be playing for the Indianapolis Colts down the stretch in the regular season. But unlike 2024, the former Auburn All-American’s current ailment isn’t life-threatening, and Smith might be able to return if the Colts make the playoffs.

Smith did not practice this week, with Indianapolis showing him sidelined by a concussion and a neck injury on its practice report. On Saturday, the Colts placed their right tackle on injured reserve.

NFL rules require players on injured reserve to miss at least four games, and Indianapolis has four games remaining on its regular-season slate.

With an 8-5 record, the Colts are fighting for a spot in the AFC playoff field. Indianapolis is the first team out in the current postseason standings on a tiebreaker – a 20-16 loss to the Houston Texans on Nov. 30.

The Colts and Texans are tied for second in the AFC South, one game behind the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Indianapolis will play its first game this season without Smith starting at right tackle at 3:25 p.m. CST Sunday, when the Colts take on the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field in Seattle.

After the Seahawks, Indianapolis closes the regular season against the San Francisco 49ers on Dec. 22, Jacksonville on Dec. 28 and Houston on Jan. 4.

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Last season, Smith missed the final five games and ended up on the non-football injury/illness list. Smith described his situation as being “a month away from putting a bullet through my brain.”

Smith’s problem began in March 2024. Eventually, he was diagnosed with the obsessive-compulsive disorder subtype religious scrupulosity.

“There’s the actual, real, true, living God,” Smith said in April. “And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemning (deity). It’s like every wrong move you make, it’s like smacking the ruler against his hand: ‘Another bad move like that and you’re out of here.’”

The International OCD Foundation defines scrupulosity as an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving religious or moral obsessions in which the individual is “overly concerned that something they thought or did might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine. They may worry about what their thoughts or behavior mean about who they are as a person. … Unlike typical religious practice, scrupulous behavior usually exceeds or disregards religious law and may focus excessively on one area of religious practice while other, more important areas may be completely ignored.”

An ordeal of therapy and medication did not help Smith until he reached for a “last-ditch” solution – ibogaine. A plant-derived psychoactive compound that is illegal to use in the United States, ibogaine has shown promise in recent studies in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries for veterans. Smith went to Mexico in late January for a five-day treatment, and he said he returned better able to put his OCD-control strategies into practice.

Smith’s progress enabled him to resume his work with the Indianapolis offensive line.

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A guard at Auburn, Smith transitioned to right tackle with the Colts as a second-round rookie in 2018. He’s been in that spot, when healthy, ever since.

Earlier this season, Smith became the eighth Auburn player to make 100 starts in the NFL as an offensive lineman, joining Wayne Gandy, Willie Anderson, Chris Gray, Dave Hill, Steve Wallace, Ben Grubbs, Frank Gatski and Tom Banks.