LAS VEGAS —
Jeremiah Smith
dropped his first target as an
Ohio State
wide receiver, then spent the next 104 targets taking over college football. Now he’ll spend the next two years as the face of the sport.
The
former top prospect in the 2024 recruiting class
enters Year 2 as a Buckeye as arguably the nation’s best player, which comes with plenty of preseason recognition.
That includes his status as the preseason favorite
to win Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, according to cleveland.com’s 15th annual Preseason Big Ten Football Poll voted on by the media
. He won with an overwhelming vote total, earning 21 of the 25 first-place votes and an overall win margin of 28 points.
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Smith is coming off a freshman season where he caught 76 of 105 targets for a Big Ten-best 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns. Along the way, he broke school freshman receiving records, earned the Big Ten’s Wide Receiver of the Year award, was a consensus second-team All-American and helped OSU win the first national championship of the 12-team College Football Playoff era.
He’ll enter his sophomore season as one of the few already-established weapons on an Ohio State offense that lost both its starting running backs, its starting tight end, slot receiver, quarterback and four of its five original starters of the 2024 offensive line to graduation and the NFL. Replacing them will be a handful of young, but talented players who also have a new, first-time playcaller in
Brian Hartline
.
That offense will get an early test when the Buckeyes host Texas in a season-opener on Aug. 30. That game will serve as a rematch of the Cotton Bowl, where OSU won 28-14 despite Smith being limited to a three-yard catch.
In total, 16 players from nine teams received at least one vote, but Penn State quarterback
Drew Allar
was the only other player to receive a first-place vote. The Nittany Lions did, however, have three players receive votes, which was the most of any team. The only other Buckeye to receive a vote was
Julian Sayin
, who is still battling
Lincoln Kienholz
to be Day’s next starting quarterback.
Smith is the fifth Ohio State player to be named the Big Ten’s preseason favorite for Offensive Player of the Year since
Ryan Day
became the head coach in 2019. Others were
Justin Fields
(2020),
Chris Olave
(2021),
C.J. Stroud
(2022) and
Marvin Harrison Jr.
(2023). Olave was the only one who didn’t go on to win the award, with Stroud instead doing so in 2021.
A panel of 25 voters was asked to list the top three players, with three points going to a first-place vote, two for second and one for third.
| Player, Position | Team | Total (First place votes) |
|---|---|---|
| Jeremiah Smith, WR | Ohio State | 66 (21) |
| Drew Allar, QB | Penn State | 38 (4) |
| Nicholas Singleton, RB | Penn State | 15 |
| Makhi Hughes, RB | Oregon | 5 |
| Kaytron Allen, RB | Penn State | 4 |
| Luke Altmyer, QB | Illinois | 3 |
| Dante Moore, QB | Oregon | 2 |
| Mark Gronowski, QB | Iowa | 2 |
| Elijah Sarratt, WR | Indiana | 2 |
| Julian Sayin, QB | Ohio State | 2 |
| Justice Haynes, RB | Michigan | 2 |
| Logan Jones, OC | Iowa | 1 |
| Denzel Boston, WR | Washington | 1 |
| Fernando Mendoza, QB | Indiana | 1 |
| Jonah Coleman, RB | Washington | 1 |
| Nico Iamaleava, QB | UCLA | 1 |
