When Jeremiah Smith’s record-setting Ohio State career is complete, he won’t be looking over his shoulder for anyone. His legacy will be out of reach. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
As preseason practice begins, Jeremiah Smith sits atop just about every best-player-in-the-nation list. One day, we will look back and see him – unless we already do – at the top of another list.
The standard.
In Ohio State football history, some greats stand out more than other greats. Woody Hayes is the coach of coaches. Archie Griffin is the running back of running backs. Orlando Pace is the offensive lineman of offensive linemen.
That’s three-fourths of Ohio State’s Mount Rushmore.
Other positions? Not so obvious.
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What about wide receiver? Since the 1980s many have played at All-American levels and gone on to NFL fame. But who’s the standard?
Cris Carter? Terry Glenn? David Boston? Marvin Harrison Jr.?
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com. Follow on X @jw_gilbert
All great. But none are the unequivocal standard at Ohio State. Those four, and others you might choose, would get votes.
The conversation, however, began to change when Jeremiah Smith arrived in Columbus ready to change the game. The constant buzz said Smith would start his first game as a freshman. Ryan Day knew what was coming.
He saw Smith’s talent, work ethic, and discipline. He wouldn’t talk about what Smith might accomplish as a freshman or how much he would play until after his first game.
“Sometimes you look at him you don’t even think he’s quite human, but he is,” Day said after Smith caught two touchdown passes against Akron. “Typically, somebody with that type of talent doesn’t have the discipline, the focus that he does.”
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Smith doesn’t possess one separator from all the others. He owns them all.
The day is near – if it’s not here already – that Jeremiah Smith will be the universally recognized standard by which all Ohio State receivers (past and future) will be measured.
“He’s a household name,” Day said last week at Big Ten Media Days.
Jeremiah Smith began to set himself apart as a freshman with one-handed catches like this one against Iowa.
From Game 1, Smith played elite football. Defenses began double- and triple-teaming him. Still, Smith gets open, catching the ball with one hand if he must. Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt calls Smith a regardless player. In other words, throw it to Smith regardless of the coverage. He will catch the football.
Smith is uncoverable. In the Buckeyes’ two losses last season, with defenses deployed to stop him, he was indefensible. Against Indiana in the Big Ten championship game, he caught eight passes for 144 yards. Against Miami in the playoffs, he caught seven passes for 157 yards.
This year, despite a much more difficult regular season schedule, Jeremiah Smith will achieve more of the same in his final season as a Buckeye.
“He has a chance to leave a legacy behind, and he knows that he’s got a whole generation of young players that look up to him and who he is,” Day said.
Legacies always involve numbers, and Smith is stockpiling them.
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Smith’s 163 catches for 2,558 yards and 27 touchdowns are the most in Big Ten history in the first two years of a career.
This season Smith will become the program’s triple crown receiving legend. He needs 43 receptions, 341 yards and nine touchdowns to be the career leader in each of those categories.
“You could say that’s something I’m chasing, but nothing really that sticks out,” he said last week. “I’m really just about the team first, and that’s winning a national championship, a Big Ten championship, bringing more hardware back to Ohio State.”
If much of the nation didn’t know much about Jeremiah Smith as a freshman, they got a closeup look in his playoff performance against Tennessee.
Smith’s own hardware shelf should require more room if voters watch him play. Most serious observers declare him as the best player in the country. But who will Biletnikoff Award and Heisman Trophy voters declare the best with their votes?
Gamers know the truth.
EA Sports College Football 26 put Smith on their cover and made him the first player to be given a 99 rating out of 100 since the game was launched 33 years ago.
NIL brokers know the truth.
Smith confirmed at Big Ten Media Days that he was offered $10 million to transfer to another school.
Coaches know the truth.
Brian Hartline knew it when he recruited Smith to come north from Florida. New receivers coach Cortez Hankton called Smith a generational talent. Day called Smith a cult hero.
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Smith’s Ohio State legacy isn’t fully written, but several chapters are complete and the final ones are just waiting on the final details. And if a second national championship in his three seasons makes the final chapter? Make room on the OSU Mount Rushmore.
“I couldn’t believe he caught it,” Ryan Day said.
“I don’t really focus on the future – I focus on what’s right now, and that’s Ohio State football,” Smith said.
He doesn’t boast. He doesn’t seek the spotlight, but he doesn’t run from it.
Jeremiah Smith knows how good he is and how he got here. That’s why, in addition to his physical work, he spent time in the offseason watching more video and having more conversations to sharpen his football IQ.
He never rests because he understands and embraces the responsibility he carries as the team’s best player.
“I’m trying to make everybody around me better, and that’s what all the greats did – Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, that’s what LeBron James is doing, so that’s what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I’m trying to leave the jersey better than what I found it.”
That’s how you set a standard.
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