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‘NFL-ready’ Jeremiah Smith cements spot as college football’s fastest-rising star


PASADENA, Calif. – As the final 10 minutes of a confusingly different College Football Playoff quarterfinal ticked off the clock at Rose Bowl Stadium, Chris Smith shuffled his way through Row 18 of Section 3 to the aisle. The father of Ohio State’s most famous player – freshman Jeremiah Smith, the nation’s top talent – is wearing a red suit given to him by Battle Sports, the football apparel company his son signed an endorsement deal with. He pulled the hood over his head as the evening temperature crept into the high 50s and a set of headphones over his ears. Aside from sitting in the Buckeyes’ family section, which had the first few rows behind Ohio State’s bench, there’s no indication that Chris Smith had any connection to the game’s fastest-rising star, an offensive MVP at that. ended as a 41-21 rout of top-seeded Oregon.

By the time Smith left the chair next to his brother Geno Smith Jr., the father of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith III, the new family singer had finished his work for the evening. He was already cutting through formations and turned a short pass from quarterback Will Howard into a 45-yard touchdown run on Ohio State’s first possession, stunning the Ducks’ closers by getting into the end zone with nary a defender. He had already leaped to make a spectacular catch between two defenders along the sideline, landing slightly between them for a 29-yard gain. He was already circling Oregon’s defense on his way to a 43-yard field goal when no one on the opposing team decided to cover him. And he was already catching back-to-back passes near the midway point of the third quarter — first on a rocking slant, then on a pirouetting toe tap — for a quick touchdown that extinguished any glimmer of hope the pro-Ducks crowd was clinging to. In all, Smith’s offense totaled a career-high 187 yards and two touchdowns — a stat line that caused his father’s eyes to widen when he took the box score in the game’s final moments.

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

And maybe he would have had Oregon not faced a 34-0 deficit at the 2:59 mark of the second quarter, ending what many expected to be a tight rematch between two teams separated by one. the point when they fought in mid-October. That night, Smith caught nine passes for 100 yards and one touchdown in a 32-31 loss at Oregon, his pass interference flag in the waning moments proving costly. He had 118 yards in the first quarter alone Wednesday night on a jaw-dropping play that prompted Oregon coach Dan Lanning to describe Smith as “NFL-ready” two full years before he was eligible to declare for the draft. Offensive coordinator Chip Kelly went further when he declared that Smith “could be the guy of a lifetime.”

Which made the second half of Ohio State’s season a bit of a puzzle as Smith’s involvement seemed to dwindle. He was targeted a season-high 13 times in the loss to Oregon and didn’t exceed seven targets in a game until he faced the Ducks again Wednesday night. A bright side of the frenzy 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 quarterback Will Johnson.

“After that game, we had bad breath,” Smith said. “We had to come in the next day and see where the problem is, fix the problems and go on the field and work. We knew we had to put the perfect ball, hit the shots and win in person. One match and that’s what we did today.”

Although he couldn’t say it publicly, Smith realized he was Ohio State’s best player with an incredible ability to find bodies when he returned home to Miami Gardens, Florida, following his first set of spring practices as an early enrollee. It was on that visit that he ran into local content creator Darrell Streeter, founder of a popular YouTube account known for documenting South Florida football. Streeter was a friend of Smith’s for the better part of a decade, since videos of his most popular youth team – the Miami Gardens Ravens – became a regular feature on the Footballville channel. When Smith’s first semester was over, Streeter wanted to know which wide receiver held the alpha role.

When asked if senior Emeka Egbuka, who is expected to be selected in the first or second round of this year’s NFL Draft, Smith gave a cautious but modest answer. When asked if sophomore Carnell Tate, a five-star prospect from the 2023 recruiting cycle, was stepping up, Smith shrugged off what amounted to a verbal shrug. “I think so,” he told Streeter, who quickly realized the real answer to his question: Even then, long before Smith made his first appearance for the Buckeyes, the teenager who graduated from high school as the No. 1 player. the country was the best recipient on the list. And at a school like Ohio State, that makes 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. “His face was like, ‘No disrespect, but I don’t think anyone is better than me.’ And that’s how you see it.”

The only question was how soon it would happen. By the time Smith traded with Streeter in the summer, he had already wandered into the spring game where the coaches warned him about the role. Smith called his father during the preparations for the April show and expressed his disappointment that he will not be seen much, especially since the event will be broadcast on national television for the first time. Circumstances led Hartline to contact Chris Smith directly in hopes of diffusing what could be a critical situation for the star player, not knowing that Smith himself had informed his parents about the news.

But there was no pushback from the family regarding Ohio State’s plan to ease Smith into the rivalry; there’s no doubting how Hartline views Smith’s development because of his impressive coaching of wide receivers in recent years, which includes four first-round picks in just the last three drafts. Chris Smith simply reminded his son to trust the coaching staff and increase production no matter how many passes are coming his way. It was the same advice he had given Smith during youth football, when the Ravens’ roster boasted more than a dozen future Division I players, and when he played for powerhouse Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School in Hollywood, Florida, the hype reached such fervent levels that head coach Dameon Jones he thought about hiring a police officer to protect his famous player during the playoffs.

“There may be 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. He is the number 1 player in the country. You can be a proud mother—–. And he wasn’t there.”

It’s the same with his time at Ohio State, with Kelly confirming Wednesday evening that Smith didn’t make demands during a record-setting season. However, he approached Hartline with a request following the team’s shocking loss at Michigan. Smith told Hartline he “wanted to be challenged” during the weeks of practice leading up to the opener against Tennessee, a team he ended up racking up six carries, 103 yards and two scores while harassing the second-team All-American quarterback. Jermod McCoy. That’s about as close as the extremely respectable Smith will come to diva-esque wide receiver behavior.

But that doesn’t mean Smith isn’t afraid to speak his mind, spill his guts on the world, and that’s exactly what he did at the Rose Bowl press day event in Los Angeles earlier this week. Smith told reporters he was “laughing in my head” when he thought about Oregon trying to defend him with one layup. “I tell everyone now that if you play a man [coverage on] Wednesday,” Smith said, “we’re taking a shot.” And that’s what Ohio State has done over and over again.

At the end of the demolition — by which time there were no Ducks fans left in the stadium — dozens of reporters with television cameras, boom microphones and cellphones swarmed Smith near the field during his interviews with ESPN and the Big Ten Network. The crowd was so dense that an Ohio State spokesman begged a security guard wearing earplugs to “get people away from him” during the celebratory melee. When Smith later walked off the stage where the Buckeyes were awarded the Leishman Trophy, he put a rose in his teeth while sitting between offensive linemen Deontae Armstrong and Seth McLaughlin to sing “Carmen Ohio” with a marching band.

Then the Ohio State faithful held Smith’s position as he tried to exit through the southeast tunnel. One fan hung a red No. 4 jersey over the first-line iron and yelled for Smith to sign it, brandishing a black Sharpie as a sign of humiliation. The first autograph opened for the second — “Would you sign this hat for another kid?” the same man pleaded – and the second burst into flames. All of a sudden, Smith was putting his name on sports programs and a variety of memorabilia while kids quickly approached him asking for some of his merchandise. The security guard was nowhere to be found when a woman wearing cowboy boots and Daisy Duke denim asked Smith if he would sign her skirt. He obligingly obliged.

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

And everyone 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.

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