The phrase "a couple of smart" is not correct and usable in written English as it is incomplete.
It can be used when referring to a small number of intelligent individuals or things, but it needs to be followed by a noun to be grammatically correct.
Example: "I met a couple of smart students at the conference."
Alternatives: "a few clever" or "a pair of intelligent".
A couple of smart academic economists devised a fancy mathematical model showing how it can come about.
Dave, a ranch owner was being kidded by Artie and Benny, a couple of smart Hollywood boys.
Grand Bahama has one large tourism development, Freeport, and a couple of smart hotels, but it is otherwise quite simple.
By The New Yorker August 12, 2008 Not long after Hurricane Katrina, a couple of smart women we know founded the Huddled Masses Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
And there are a couple of smart and provocative bits of stage business, winking tableaux out of Regency romances, in the first act.
Michael Bradley played well, as one would have expected him to do, and Tim Howard made a couple of smart saves in the second half.
The only problem is that through most of the first half, and well into the second, "Celadine" presents itself as a pure comedy, with a couple of smart-alecky women who say stuff like "it's a habit of mine to repel them," when offered compliments.
There are five phones, a couple of them smart and stored inexplicably in their original boxes (a state of affairs that makes me look like a serious collector, but is really an example of senseless hoarding).
"When we shifted the ball wide we looked good and we have a couple of really smart half-backs".
A similar thing is happening to Nintendo with the Wii U. The Wii was a wonderfully simple device with a couple of very smart accessories (like the Wii Fit) and a raft of dumb ones.
In Kevin Muscat and Frank Farina, Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC are coached by a couple of street-smart scrappers reared in the kill-or-be-killed wilds of the NSL.
