Jeremiah Smith is rewriting Ohio State's receiving records

From Miami Gardens to the top of a recruiting class

Smith was born in Miami Gardens and played his high school football at Miami Central and then Chaminade-Madonna College Prep in Hollywood, Florida. He arrived at Ohio State as the top-ranked prospect in the entire 2024 class and the highest-ranked receiver recruit of the modern recruiting era, counted from 2000 (Wikipedia)).

Going north was not the obvious choice. His hometown school, Miami, wanted him badly, and a CBS Sports profile by Brandon Marcello reports that his father, Chris Smith, gave him a simple rule during recruiting: "Don't be led by money" (CBS Sports). That advice got tested again after the 2025 season, when, according to the same profile, he turned down transfer offers worth roughly $10 million to stay in Columbus.

Two seasons that already looked like a career

As a true freshman in 2024 he set the FBS single-season marks for receiving yards and receiving touchdowns by a true freshman. He followed that with a sophomore year that was almost identical in yardage, earned unanimous All-America honors, and was named Big Ten Receiver of the Year for a second time.

Those 163 catches, 2,558 yards and 27 touchdowns were the most by any Big Ten receiver in his first two college seasons (ESPN). The freshman season also ended with a national championship, won in January 2025.

The September records, in plain numbers

• Career receiving yards: passed Michael Jenkins (2,898) on September 19 and reached 3,175 after the Illinois game, the first Buckeye over 3,000.
• Four touchdown catches in one game: he joins Noah Brown, Dane Sanzenbacher, Terry Glenn and Bob Grimes. Brown was the last to do it, in 2016 against Oklahoma.
• A 200-yard game: he is the sixth Buckeye with one, after Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Terry Glenn, Santonio Holmes, Gary Williams and David Boston.
• Career touchdown catches: 34, level with David Boston and one behind Chris Olave's school record of 35.

One honest caveat. Early reports of the Illinois game disagreed on his final yardage, with figures ranging from 200 to 217, so we are not pinning an exact number here. If you need it to the yard, check the official box score. The four touchdowns, including a 72-yard catch and a sideline toe-tap that had broadcasters asking how his left foot stayed in, are not in dispute (Eleven Warriors).

My favorite detail in those lists is a name that shows up twice. Terry Glenn is on both the four-touchdown list and the 200-yard list, and Glenn is also the first Buckeye to win the Biletnikoff Award, in 1995. Smith has said that award is the one he wants most.

Why his coaches keep saying he is still learning

The best reporting on Smith is less about speed and more about curiosity. Marcello's profile describes former Ohio State receivers coach Brian Hartline quizzing him after routes with a single question, "Why was that good?" The idea was to make an instinctive player explain his own instincts. Hartline left in December 2025 to become head coach at South Florida, and he told Smith in person before the news broke.

The same piece says Smith studies old interviews with Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady about mindset, and calls himself "literally an old head." For a 20-year-old, that is a surprisingly quiet way to spend spare time. I find it the most revealing line anyone has written about him.

There is a younger, rawer version of him on record too. Talking to cleveland.com's Stephen Means about his freshman-year loss to Michigan, he remembered how he took it:

Two seasons later, the player who skipped dinner was named a team captain. ESPN's preseason story said the honor made him tear up when he heard it, and teammates described a player who had been quiet for two years finally coming out of his shell.

What happens after this season

ESPN described 2026 as his final college season, and the draft analysts agree on where he is heading. CBS Sports draft writer Ryan Wilson wrote on September 8 that Smith will probably be the first non-quarterback taken in April 2027, and noted that no wide receiver has gone first overall since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996 (CBS Sports). Why he could not go sooner is a rule with its own Ohio State history, which we explain in our draft-eligibility piece.

Before then comes the award chase. The Biletnikoff's three finalists are scheduled to be named on November 24, 2026, and the winner revealed on December 11 (Biletnikoff Award). He was a finalist in 2025 and lost to USC's Makai Lemon, and we wrote a separate look at the 56-pound trophy he is chasing.

Asked in August whether he was already the best receiver in Ohio State history, he declined to answer and told the reporter to come back in six months. We checked the calendar. About six weeks have passed, and the record book has already done a lot of the answering for him.