Through head coaching stops at Oregon, UCLA, the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers, Chip Kelly has coached and faced many great football players over the past few decades.
But Jeremiah Smith is different from anyone else he’s seen. It’s one thing for him to have a 1,000-yard season and 12 receiving touchdowns. It’s something else entirely for him to do that as a true freshman who just turned 19 years old. Kelly has never seen anything like it.
“As young?,” Kelly said when asked if he’s ever seen a comparable player to Smith at his age. “No. Not at that maturity level. That approach, those physical young skills as a player, as a freshman, I’ve not seen anybody like Jeremiah, no.”
Maturity is a common theme associated with Smith by his peers and mentors. Since he finished eighth grade, scouts, coaches and recruiting analysts have been in his ear about how special Smith is as a football player, lauding that he boasts skills rivaled by few others. Yet the former No. 1 overall prospect in the 2024 recruiting class hasn’t let the early success of blowing past nearly every Ohio State freshman receiving record go to his head. He still thinks there’s another level he can push himself to.
“A lot of people tell me I’m great at what I do. Since I was going into high school, people have told me that,” Smith said. “I mean, football is all I know, and all I really want to do. I live, breathe, sleep football. That’s all I really care about. I don’t care about anything outside of football. It’s all I know and I want to play football for the rest of my life.”
Coming off a devastating loss to Michigan for the fourth year in a row, Smith had a candid conversation with Ohio State wide receivers coach Brian Hartline after OSU’s Senior Tackle event. Smith told his mentor he wanted Hartline to challenge him hard leading up to the Buckeyes’ first-round matchup with Tennessee. Hartline obliged.
The result was Smith catching six passes for 103 yards and two touchdowns en route to helping the Buckeyes to a 42-17 win over the Volunteers in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
“That’s how you become great,” Smith said of his request to Hartline to be challenged. “You see guys like Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, they want to be pushed. I’m trying to be like them, in football.”
At this point in the season, Smith has made enough one-handed catches and other dazzling plays that Kelly and others affiliated with OSU aren’t surprised by anything he does anymore. Well, unless he does something like don cleats resembling the Christmas anti-hero The Grinch, as he did Friday, which got a wry chuckle out of Kelly. Kelly was also surprised Smith wasn’t given Shaun Alexander Freshman of The Year honors last week.
“He wasn’t?," a perplexed Kelly asked when told Smith hadn’t won the award. Kelly was then informed the honor went to Texas edge rusher Colin Simmons instead.
“He’s a good player. I didn’t have a vote,” Kelly said with a wry smile, not all that subtly hiding his true feelings on the matter.
The consensus from OSU players and coaches is their first ‘Wow, Jeremiah’ moment came all the way back in the spring. Fellow wideout Emeka Egbuka said Saturday the more plays Smith makes, the less of a deal Egbuka makes of it. Similar sentiments have been shared by others inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center as they’ve become accustomed to Smith making near-impossible plays seem normal. But they’re trying not to take his greatness for granted, either.
“When you’re around it every single day, you kind of forget that the kid was in high school a year ago,” quarterback Will Howard said. “You’re just around him, he doesn’t feel like a high school kid. He’s just mature beyond his years. I’ve never seen anyone be able to do the stuff he’s able to do (at that age).”
Lauding Smith’s ability to still create separation when defenses are bracketing him, Howard estimates a team would have to put three or four defenders on Smith for the star wideout to not be considered open. Smith thinks that’s too conservative of an estimate, though, and playfully said he’d only not consider himself open if the whole defense was guarding him.
Smith is eager to get another shot against Oregon on Wednesday in the Rose Bowl, with memories of the previous mid-October one-point defeat lingering all too often. Particularly, the offensive pass interference penalty Smith was called for. But he hopes to put all of that behind him and help the Buckeyes take another step toward winning a national title.
“I’ll say it’s going to be a good challenge,” Smith said of the upcoming rematch with the Ducks. “They have a great group of guys over there. Probably the best we’ll see all year. We’ve just got to go out there and be Ohio State, that’s all.”
