Jeremiah Smith Isn’t Just Chasing Ohio State History — He May Be Chasing College Football Immortality
At some point, you have to stop calling what Jeremiah Smith is doing “special.”
Special doesn’t quite cover it anymore.
After torching Illinois for 12 receptions, 217 yards and four touchdowns in Ohio State’s 42-19 win Saturday, Smith tied the Buckeyes’ single-game record for touchdown receptions and produced the first 200-yard receiving game of his already remarkable career.
And he is still only a junior.
The temptation with a player this young is to pump the brakes. Let the career play out. Respect the legends who came before him. Avoid recency bias.
All of that is fair.
But there is another point where being overly cautious becomes its own form of denial.
Jeremiah Smith has reached that point.
The case can now be made that Smith is already the greatest wide receiver in Ohio State history. By the time this season is finished, there may be a legitimate argument that he is the greatest player to ever wear Scarlet and Gray.
And if the trajectory continues, something even bigger should enter the discussion:
Jeremiah Smith could leave Columbus with a résumé worthy of consideration among the greatest college football players of all time.
The numbers are becoming absurd
Smith arrived at Ohio State with enormous expectations and somehow exceeded them immediately.
As a freshman in 2024, he caught 76 passes for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns, breaking Ohio State freshman records across the board. He helped lead the Buckeyes to a national championship, caught five touchdown passes during the College Football Playoff and was named Rose Bowl Offensive MVP.
Then came his sophomore season.
Instead of falling back toward the mean, Smith caught 87 passes for 1,243 yards and 12 touchdowns, earned unanimous All-America honors and established himself as the premier receiver in the country.
Through only two collegiate seasons, Smith already had 2,558 receiving yards and 27 receiving touchdowns.
Then 2026 began.
He opened the season with 151 yards and two touchdowns against Ball State.
He followed that with 164 yards and a touchdown at Texas.
Against Kent State, he passed Michael Jenkins to become Ohio State’s all-time leader in receiving yards.
Think about that for a moment.
Ohio State has produced Cris Carter, Joey Galloway, Terry Glenn, David Boston, Michael Jenkins, Santonio Holmes, Devin Smith, Michael Thomas, Terry McLaurin, Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka.
Jeremiah Smith passed all of them in career receiving yardage before October of his junior season.
Now comes Illinois.
Twelve catches.
217 yards.
Four touchdowns.
Another piece of Ohio State history.
At this point Smith isn’t slowly climbing the record book.
He is attacking it.
Ohio State has never seen anything quite like this
Calling someone the greatest player in Ohio State history is not something that should be done casually.
This is the program of Archie Griffin.
The only two-time Heisman Trophy winner in college football history.
Griffin rushed for 5,589 yards, produced 31 consecutive 100-yard rushing games, won four consecutive Big Ten championships and became one of the most iconic players the sport has ever seen.
This is the program of Eddie George, one of the most dominant running backs in school history and the 1995 Heisman Trophy winner.
It is the program of Orlando Pace, one of the most dominant offensive linemen college football has ever seen.
Jack Tatum.
Chic Harley.
Hopalong Cassady.
Chris Spielman.
Randy Gradishar.
Keith Byars.
Troy Smith.
Ezekiel Elliott.
Marvin Harrison Jr.
That is the company Smith is entering.
And Smith has something many of those legends did not possess: a résumé that was historic almost from the first time he stepped onto the field.
There was no developmental season.
There was no waiting period.
There was no “someday he could become great.”
He arrived great.
The freshman season changed the standard
There have been fantastic freshman receivers before.
There have been fantastic freshmen at Ohio State.
But Smith looked like a fully developed NFL receiver almost immediately.
At 18 years old, he became the centerpiece of a national championship offense. During Ohio State’s four-game CFP run, he caught 19 passes for 381 yards and five touchdowns, repeatedly dominating some of the best teams in the country.
That distinction matters.
Plenty of players pile up statistics against overmatched competition.
Smith has produced against elite opponents.
Those are not empty numbers.
Those are championship-stage numbers.
The bigger the game, the less Smith seems to shrink from it.
Then there is the eye test
Statistics tell only part of this story.
Watch Smith play.
The physical advantages jump off the screen.
At 6-foot-4 and 222 pounds, he has the frame of a power receiver with the movement skills of a player significantly smaller.
He can win vertically.
He can win underneath.
He can overpower defensive backs.
He can separate.
He can adjust to poorly thrown footballs.
He can turn a contested catch into something that looks routine.
Defenses know where the football is going and still struggle to prevent it.
That final part separates very good players from transcendent ones.
College football history is filled with dominant players whose greatness eventually forced opponents to design entire game plans around them.
Barry Sanders.
Herschel Walker.
Bo Jackson.
Randy Moss.
Larry Fitzgerald.
Calvin Johnson.
Reggie Bush.
They reached a level where everybody in the stadium understood who the offense was built around.
It often didn’t matter.
Smith is increasingly occupying that same space.
The position makes his dominance even more impressive
Quarterbacks naturally touch the ball on every offensive snap.
Running backs can receive 25 or 30 carries.
Wide receivers live at the mercy of protection, quarterback accuracy, defensive coverage and play calling.
A defense can bracket a receiver.
Roll a safety over the top.
Play press coverage underneath.
Force the quarterback elsewhere.
Smith keeps producing anyway.
And he is doing it during an era in which Ohio State’s receiving room is hardly devoid of talent. He isn’t accumulating opportunities simply because nobody else can play.
Ohio State routinely sends receivers to the NFL.
Smith simply looks different from all of them.
The Archie Griffin question
This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable for longtime Ohio State fans.
How can anyone surpass Archie?
Two Heismans.
Four Big Ten championships.
Four Rose Bowls.
One of the most iconic careers in the sport.
There may never be another Ohio State player whose historical significance matches Griffin’s.
But “most historically significant” and “greatest football player” do not necessarily have to mean exactly the same thing.
Smith has a chance to create a different kind of case.
If he finishes his junior season holding essentially every meaningful receiving record at Ohio State, adds another spectacular postseason run and puts himself squarely into major national-award history, then the debate becomes real.
Not disrespectful.
Not recency bias.
Real.
And there is one particularly fascinating possibility hanging over everything.
The Heisman Trophy.
Only a small number of players primarily known as wide receivers have won it, which tells you how difficult that mountain is to climb.
If Smith were to win it, his argument inside Ohio State history would become extraordinarily difficult to dismiss.
If he somehow eventually paired that with another championship?
Then the conversation would change permanently.
What about the greatest college football player ever?
That claim obviously requires a much higher threshold.
College football’s history stretches across generations.
Jim Thorpe.
Red Grange.
Jim Brown.
Herschel Walker.
Bo Jackson.
Barry Sanders.
Archie Griffin.
Earl Campbell.
Randy Moss.
Reggie Bush.
Cam Newton.
Tim Tebow.
The styles of play, schedules and eras are so different that there will never be a mathematical answer.
But the greatest-of-all-time conversation has always depended on a combination of four things:
Dominance. Production. Moments. Championships.
Smith already possesses the first two.
His résumé is quickly accumulating the third.
He already owns one of the fourth.
That is why this possibility should no longer sound ridiculous.
Smith does not need to become the statistical leader in every category college football has ever produced.
That isn’t how greatness works across positions.
What he needs is a career that people remember as something they had never witnessed before.
And that is exactly what is developing.
This is what history looks like while it is happening
The problem with historic careers is that we usually recognize them more clearly afterward.
Years later, the highlights become montages.
Statistics become records.
Moments become mythology.
We forget there was ever uncertainty about what we were watching.
Jeremiah Smith is offering Ohio State fans a rare opportunity to recognize it in real time.
He is not chasing Marvin Harrison Jr. anymore.
He is not chasing Chris Olave.
He is not chasing Cris Carter or David Boston.
He has started chasing Archie Griffin.
And beyond Archie sits an even smaller group — the handful of players whose names define college football itself.
Smith still has work to do.
That is what makes this so exciting.
His story is not complete.
But through two-plus seasons, the trajectory is unmistakable.
Jeremiah Smith arrived in Columbus as perhaps the most celebrated wide receiver recruit Ohio State had ever signed.
He became a national champion as a freshman.
He became a unanimous All-American as a sophomore.
He became Ohio State’s career receiving-yardage leader early in his junior season.
And Saturday, with 217 yards and four touchdowns against Illinois, he supplied another reminder that the limits of his career may extend far beyond the Ohio State record book.
The question is no longer whether Jeremiah Smith will leave Ohio State as one of its legends.
He already is one.
The question now is how high the legend grows.
Because when Jeremiah Smith’s college career finally ends, we may not simply be discussing the greatest receiver Ohio State has ever seen.
We may be discussing the greatest Buckeye of them all.
And maybe — just maybe — one of the greatest players college football has ever produced.