I don't think so.
He's currently a VA, and even then, he's not all that powerful for a Vice Admiral. He's also a VA despite the fact he has the balls to tell his superiors to eat shit, but he's still compliant and he's getting promoted meaning his personal sentiments don't matter all that much since he still does his job.
He also got promoted in Alabasta despite telling high command to eat shit, so I think his ranks are pretty accurate, if that were not the case, he shouldn't be getting promoted and more so to VA which is the rank before Admiral. I also don't have much basis to say he's under ranked unlike Garp who actually refused promotion to Admiral.
He was definitely under ranked at introduction. I mean he is a Logia user and was just a captain despite being in his 30s. We have seen the average HQ Captain at Enies Lobby, they have decent strenght with Shuu breaking an (probably exhausted) Zoro's Yubashiri, but...
The Strawhats fought a hundred of these off at the same time, whereas Smoker would have still given them a hard time in Sabaody.
The dialogues he has with Hina heavily implies that his Logue Town job was a case of "promoting someone away". He is way to overqualified for the likes of East Blue, but Logue Town is kinda important so on paper it looks all fine. Funny that, in the end, that was a good decision.
Now he is likely the new G5 commander so that would mean another promotion. There is this scene of Smoker easily having cought a 50M Belly GL Pirate somewhere in Paradise. No one can stop him as a Logia in Paradise anyways, so he likely gained the track record he could never achieve in East Blue, making promotion inevitable.
I also think that Smoker is misperceived. His Punk Hazard plot is a clear example of Worf Effect. Vice Admiral's are the elite of the Marines but they shouldn't win against New World Shishibukai. Vergo was a higher ranked Marine than him as a Base Commander, in fact his senior and direct superior, again unsurprising how that went.
The fight against Law is one of the most elaborated non-Strawhat fights in the entire series, taking up almost an entire chapter. He did rather well here. We have Maynard as the bottom of VA quality and honestly based on Smoker's vs Law and Vergo performances, I wouldn't see him fail as miserably against Sabo as Bastille, like he would still lose, sure, but not like that.