'NFL-ready' Jeremiah Smith solidifies place as college football's fastest-growing star

PASADENA, Calif. — As the final 10 minutes of a confoundingly lopsided College Football Playoff quarterfinal drained from the Rose Bowl Stadium clock, Chris Smith shuffled his way through Row 18 of Section 3 until he reached an aisle. The father of Ohio State’s most famous player — freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith, the most talented wideout in the country — sported a scarlet sweatsuit provided to him by Battle Sports, the football apparel company with which his son had signed an endorsement deal. He pulled the hood over his head as the evening temperature dipped into the upper 50s and a set of headphones wrapped around his ears. Aside from the fact that he was seated in the Buckeyes‘ family section, which occupied the first few rows behind Ohio State’s bench, there was nothing to indicate that Chris Smith bore any relation to the sport’s fastest-growing star, the offensive MVP from what ended as a 41-21 annihilation of top-seeded Oregon.

By the time Smith stepped away from the seat alongside his brother Geno Smith Jr., the father of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith III, the newest family prodigy had completed his work for the evening. He’d already scooted across the formation and transformed a short pass from quarterback Will Howard into a galloping 45-yard touchdown on Ohio State’s first possession, stunning the nearby sections of Ducks faithful by waltzing into the end zone with nary a defender in sight. He’d already leapt to secure a breathtakingly nimble catch between two defenders along the sideline, landing softly between them to gain 29 yards. He’d already rocketed through Oregon’s defense from his alignment in the slot for a 43-yard score wherein nobody from the opposing secondary decided to cover him. And he’d already snared back-to-back passes near the midway point of the third quarter — first on a shimmy-shake slant, then on a pirouetting toe-tap — to facilitate a rushing touchdown that extinguished any glimmer of hope to which the pro-Ducks crowd was clinging. All told, Smith’s damage amounted to seven catches for a career-high 187 yards and two touchdowns — a stat line that caused his father’s eyes to widen when scanning the box score in the game’s final moments.

“I guess [the coaches] got tired of hearing all that outside noise,” Chris Smith told FOX Sports with a mischievous grin and only a hint of sarcasm. “I wanted him to hit 200 yards.”

And he probably would have if Oregon hadn’t faceplanted into a 34-0 deficit by the 2:59 mark of the second quarter, undercutting what many expected to be a nip-and-tuck rematch between two teams that were separated by a single point when they battled in mid-October. On that night, Smith caught nine passes for 100 yards and one touchdown in a 32-31 loss to Oregon, his flag for offensive pass interference in the waning moments proving to be quite costly. He reached 118 yards in the first quarter alone on Wednesday night in a jaw-dropping performance that prompted Oregon head coach Dan Lanning to describe Smith as “NFL-ready” two full years before he’s eligible to declare for the draft. Offensive coordinator Chip Kelly went even further when he declared that Smith “may be a once-in-a-lifetime guy.”

Which is what made the second half of Ohio State’s season so puzzling as Smith’s involvement seemed to shrivel. He was targeted a season-high 13 times during the loss to Oregon and then never exceeded seven targets in a game until facing the Ducks again on Wednesday night. A good chunk of the dumbfounded confusion surrounding the Buckeyes’ loss to Michigan in late November was that Smith only caught five passes for 35 yards against a team that was missing All-American cornerback Will Johnson.

“After that game, we had a bad taste in our mouth,” Smith said. “We just had to come in the next day and just see what the issue was, fix the issues and get on the field and work. We knew we had to get the ball to the perimeter, take shots and just win one-on-one matchups. And that’s what we did today.”

Though he would be unlikely to say it publicly, Smith realized he was the best player in Ohio State’s impossibly talented receiving corps by the time he returned home to Miami Gardens, Florida, following his initial batch of spring practices as an early enrollee. It was during that visit when he crossed paths with local content creator Darrell Streeter, the founder of a popular YouTube account known for documenting grassroots football in South Florida. Streeter was someone with whom Smith had been friendly for the better part of a decade, ever since videos of his ultra-popular youth team — the Miami Gardens Ravens — became staples on the Footballville channel. Once Smith’s first semester was completed, Streeter wanted to know which wideout occupied the alpha role.

When asked if it was senior Emeka Egbuka, who is expected to become a first- or second-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft, Smith cautiously but politely agreed. When asked if it was rising sophomore Carnell Tate, a five-star prospect from the 2023 recruiting cycle, Smith demurred in what amounted to a verbal shrug of the shoulders. “I guess,” he told Streeter, who quickly recognized the real answer to his question: Even then, long before Smith would make his first real appearance for the Buckeyes, the teenager who finished high school as the No. 1 overall player in the country was the best receiver on the roster. And at a school like Ohio State, that effectively made Smith the best receiver in college football. Streeter apologized to Smith the next time they saw each other.

“He just started laughing,” Streeter told FOX Sports earlier this fall. “The look on his face was like, ‘No disrespect, but I don’t think anybody is better than me.’ And that’s how he kind of sees it.”

The only question was how quickly it would happen. By the time Smith had his exchange with Streeter over the summer, he’d already navigated a spring game for which the coaches warned him of a peripheral role. Smith called his father during the buildup to April’s showcase and expressed some disappointment that he wouldn’t be featured more prominently, especially considering the event was going to be broadcast on national television for the first time. The circumstances prompted Brian Hartline, the Buckeyes’ co-offensive coordinator and receivers coach, to contact Chris Smith directly in hopes of diffusing what might have been a prickly situation for a player with such sky-high expectations, unaware that Smith himself had already informed his parents of the news.

But there was no pushback from the family about Ohio State’s plan to ease Smith into the fray; no questioning of Hartline’s approach to Smith’s development given his remarkable tutelage of wide receivers in recent years, which includes four first-round picks in the last three drafts alone. Chris Smith simply reminded his son to trust the coaching staff and maximize the production for however many passes would come his way. It was the same advice he’d imparted onto Smith during youth football, when the Ravens’ roster boasted more than a dozen future Division I players, and again when he starred for powerhouse Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School in Hollywood, Florida, where the hype reached such fanatical levels that head coach Dameon Jones considered hiring a police officer to protect his star player during the playoffs.

“There might have been one time [when] JJ asked for the ball,” Jones told FOX Sports earlier this fall, “and it was because he had a guy in front of him talking s—. But any other time, no. It was the weirdest s— ever. You’re the No. 1 player in the country. You can be an arrogant motherf—–. And he wasn’t.”

The same holds true during his time at Ohio State, with Kelly confirming on Wednesday evening that Smith hasn’t made any demands amid a record-setting freshman season. He did, however, approach Hartline with a request following the team’s stunning loss to Michigan. Smith told Hartline that he “wanted to be challenged” during the weeks of practice leading up to an opening-round matchup with Tennessee, a team he eventually shredded for six catches, 103 yards and two scores while victimizing second-team All-American cornerback Jermod McCoy. That’s about as close as the exceedingly polite Smith will come to diva-esque wide receiver behavior.

But that doesn’t mean Smith is unafraid to speak his mind, to spill some of his confidence into the world, and that’s exactly what he did at the Rose Bowl media day event in Los Angeles earlier this week. Smith told reporters that he was “laughing in my head” when thinking about Oregon trying to defend him with single coverage. “I’m just letting everybody know right now that if you play man [coverage on] Wednesday,” Smith said, “we’re taking a shot.” And that’s what Ohio State did over and over and over again.

By the time the demolition finally ended — at which point hardly any Ducks fans remained in the stadium — droves of reporters wielding television cameras, boom microphones and cell phones engulfed Smith near midfield during his postgame interviews with ESPN and Big Ten Network. So dense was the crowd that an Ohio State spokesman implored an earpiece-wearing security guard to “keep people off him” amid the celebratory fray. When Smith later descended from the stage where the Buckeyes were awarded the Leishman Trophy, he clamped a rose stem in his teeth while settling between offensive linemen Deontae Armstrong and Seth McLaughlin to sing “Carmen Ohio” with the marching band supplying the tune.

And then the Ohio State faithful caught site of Smith during his attempted exit via the southeast tunnel. One fan dangled a scarlet No. 4 jersey over the first-row railing and screamed for Smith to sign, dangling a black sharpie as an inducement. The first autograph gave way to a second — “Can you sign this hat for another kid?” the same man pleaded — and the second ignited a frenzy. Suddenly, Smith was scrawling his name across game programs and assorted memorabilia while fast-approaching children begged for some of his gear. The security guard was nowhere to be found when a woman in cowboy boots and Daisy Duke denim asked Smith if he would sign her skirt. He unflinchingly obliged.

“That boy is 19 years old,” a nearby man said in disbelief. “He’s 19 years old!”

And everybody wanted a token from the night Jeremiah Smith became an even bigger star.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.