Two weeks ago, Jeremiah Smith looked like a superstar with a real Heisman case.

Now he’s the outright favorite.

That’s what 23 catches, 423 yards, and six touchdowns over eight quarters of football will do for you. Smith tore apart Illinois for 217 yards and four scores, then followed it up with 206 yards and two more touchdowns at Kinnick Stadium against an Iowa defense that had been giving up just 152 passing yards per game.

And here’s the wild part: everyone knew Ohio State was going to look for him.

Illinois knew it. Iowa knew it. Every defensive coordinator still on the schedule knows it, too. They’ll spend all week dreaming up ways to slow down No. 4, and Ohio State will keep finding ways to get him the ball anyway.

That kind of production has pushed Smith to the top of the Heisman race. He’s now a -110 favorite at FanDuel, with Miami quarterback Darian Mensah next at +700. In a sport that usually hands this trophy to quarterbacks on a silver platter, a wide receiver has already created real separation by the first weekend of October.

The numbers are ridiculous, but they’re not even the best part of the argument.

Smith isn’t dominating because defenses are overlooking him. He’s dominating while every defense is pointing his way.

Illinois Saw The Whole Jeremiah Smith Experience

Smith’s afternoon against Illinois felt like somebody crammed his entire scouting report into one game.

There was the 31-yard catch on Ohio State’s opening possession, followed three plays later by a seven-yard touchdown. Then came the 72-yard catch-and-run, when Smith caught the ball over the middle, hit defensive back Mac Resetich with two quick moves, and left him standing there. Smith later admitted he started laughing when it happened and felt “kind of bad” for the defender, which is an incredibly disrespectful thing to say in the nicest possible way.

Then came a nine-yard fade, with Smith making the catch even though he had a defender draped all over him and still dragging his left foot in bounds. His fourth touchdown was a 26-yarder where he created enough separation to turn the corner and finish the play standing up.

Deep speed. Strength after the catch. Body control at the boundary. Red-zone dominance. Smith showed all of it.

He had 123 receiving yards in the first quarter, the most by any player in the first quarter of a Big Ten game in at least 20 years. By halftime, he had eight catches, 150 yards and three touchdowns. By the end, he’d become just the fifth Ohio State receiver with four touchdown catches in a game, joining a list that includes Terry Glenn and Noah Brown.

Illinois coach Bret Bielema gave Smith plenty of credit after the game:

He creates a unique matchup issue... Even when I was in the SEC, and when I was in the NFL, you just see these guys that are a different type of player. He just continues to play extremely big. He's very physical and obviously very dominant after the catch as well.

That game took Smith from contender to center stage. The next one made the argument impossible to ignore.

Iowa Knew Exactly What Was Coming

Illinois came into the Ohio State game with a leaky secondary and a pass rush Bielema himself called unacceptable. Iowa didn’t have that excuse.

The Hawkeyes were ranked No. 14 and giving up just eight points per game. Their opponents had averaged 152 passing yards. This was supposed to be the week a serious defense made Ohio State prove they had another answer.

Instead, Smith caught 11 passes for 206 yards and two touchdowns. Iowa managed 238 yards as an entire offense.

The defining catch wasn’t even a particularly good decision by Sayin. Early in the second quarter, he stepped up and fired one down the middle into a crowd. Three Iowa defenders closed in. Smith fought through the contact and turned a questionable read into a 54-yard gain.

Ryan Day was refreshingly honest afterward:

That wasn't a great read, but a ridiculous throw and ridiculous catch.

Exactly.

Quarterbacks usually get extra credit in this race because they’re responsible for making everything work. Smith's building his case on the plays where he makes a less-than-perfect decision work anyway.

His first touchdown came with 12 seconds left in the half. On third down, he caught the ball short of the goal line, powered through contact, and stretched it across before his knee hit. His second was the 57-yard dagger in the third quarter, when Iowa finally lost track of him and Sayin found him running free down the right side.

That part matters, too. The Hawkeyes didn’t spend all afternoon leaving Smith on an island. They mixed in double teams and rolled extra attention his way. Sometimes he beat the coverage with strength. Sometimes Ohio State moved him around until the defense lost him. And sometimes all that attention opened things up elsewhere, including for a Buckeye running game that finished with 160 yards.

Afterward, Kirk Ferentz compared the experience to preparing for Saquon Barkley:

I think I said during the week, Saquon Barkley's probably the only — I mean, there's been a lot of great players we've played against. I'm probably minimizing somebody, but Barkley, whatever year it was out there, it was pretty impressive. We gave him everything we had, and he was still pretty effective, and the same thing today. He's got great size, great competitiveness, and just great ability for a receiver. All you can do is do your best and try to be as smart as you can playing him, but he's a great player. With a little bit of luck, we won't see him again during my career, so that'd be okay.

That might be the best campaign ad Smith's gotten yet.

Ohio State's Making Him Harder To Cover Before The Ball Is Snapped

Smith has always been physically unfair. The bigger development this season is that Ohio State is making him harder to find.

In 2025, Smith lined up outside on 519 of his 632 offensive snaps. He was in the slot 106 times and in the backfield seven. That isn’t misuse — he caught 87 passes for 1,243 yards — but it gave defenses a pretty clear picture. Put your top corner on him, shade a safety over the top for good measure, and make somebody else beat you.

New offensive coordinator Arthur Smith has treated that as a starting point, not a permanent address.

Ohio State's moving Jeremiah Smith into the slot, sending him in motion and using switch releases to change who has to cover him. That movement makes the defense show their hand. If a corner follows him across the formation, the Buckeyes have a pretty good idea it’s man coverage. If the defense passes him off, the spacing can give away the zone. And if two defenders stay attached to him, everything else gets a little cleaner.

Then the ball gets snapped, and the defense still has to deal with a 6-foot-4, 223-pound receiver who can run past a corner, bully a safety, and turn a short catch into a house call.

That’s why “just double him” sounds a lot easier on Tuesday than it looks on Saturday. A bracket works best when the offense lets you set it up. Motion changes the leverage. A slot alignment gives Smith two ways to release instead of letting the sideline act like another defender. Stacks and switch releases force defensive backs to communicate through traffic, and one half-second of confusion is all he needs.

Smith has 21 catches of at least 15 yards this season. Eight have gone for at least 25. He isn’t padding the stat sheet with harmless screens while Ohio State tries to manufacture a campaign for him. The Buckeyes are creating opportunities, sure, but Smith's finishing them with the full toolbox that made him the highest-rated receiver recruit in 247Sports history.

The plan Arthur Smith laid out in the offseason was pretty simple: expand his game, move him around, and get him the ball.

So far, it’s been pretty hard to argue with.

Julian Sayin Is Helping Build A Campaign That Might Pass Him

Julian Sayin was actually the Ohio State player who came into the season with the more traditional Heisman resume.

He finished fourth in the voting last year. Smith finished sixth. Sayin's the quarterback for an undefeated Ohio State team, he’s completing 72.5% of his passes, and he’s thrown 13 touchdowns to just one interception. In a normal year, that’s the one we’d be talking about.

But more than half of Sayin’s passing yards — 823 of 1,530 — have gone to Smith. Smith's caught 44 of Sayin’s 103 completions. All four of Sayin’s touchdown passes against Illinois went to him.

That doesn’t mean Sayin is just throwing the ball somewhere near Smith and hoping he’ll figure it out. The timing between them is real. Sayin's been decisive and willing to take aggressive shots. He recognized the coverage on those Illinois touchdowns. He stepped up before delivering the 57-yard score at Iowa. He trusts Smith because Smith keeps giving him good reasons to.

But the Heisman is ultimately an argument about value, and Ohio State's giving voters a pretty clear picture of Smith’s.

When Sayin makes the right read, Smith wins. When the defense tilts toward Smith, Ohio State moves him around and lets Sayin find the opening somewhere else. And when Sayin makes the wrong read, Smith might still fight through three defenders and turn it into a 54-yard gain anyway.

The quarterback's playing well enough to be in the race. His receiver has been so ridiculous that he might be pushing him right out of it.

The Receiver Tax Hasn’t Disappeared

Smith's the favorite right now. That doesn’t mean the hard part’s over.

DeVonta Smith is still the only pure wide receiver to win the Heisman since Desmond Howard in 1991. Travis Hunter won in 2024, but he was also an elite cornerback. Receivers don’t get the weekly benefit of the doubt quarterbacks do. A quarterback can have a quiet afternoon, hand the ball off 30 times, and still get credit for the win. A receiver puts up seven catches for 90 yards, and people start asking where he went.

That’s what makes the comparison to DeVonta so useful. Through five games of his 2020 Heisman season, DeVonta had 45 catches for 556 yards and five touchdowns. Through five games this year, Jeremiah has 44 catches for 823 yards and nine touchdowns.

That’s a ridiculous head start. It’s not a guarantee.

Mensah has completed more than 84% of his passes at Miami, with 15 touchdowns and no interceptions. Alabama’s Keelon Russell and Notre Dame’s CJ Carr are still in position to make the kind of late-season quarterback push voters are used to rewarding. Smith has separated himself from the field, but the field isn’t going to just sit there and wait.

There’s already a warning on Ohio State’s schedule. Smith had eight catches for 164 yards and a touchdown against Texas, then went catchless in the second half as the Buckeyes blew a 20-point lead. Some of that was coverage. Some of it was Sayin missing chances to get him the ball. Either way, it showed what can happen when Ohio State loses that connection to their best player.

Now The Big Ten Gets Their Turn

Maryland's next. Then Indiana, a trip to USC, Oregon, and, eventually, Michigan.

Every one of those defenses is going to start with the same question: How do we keep Jeremiah Smith from wrecking the game?

Some will press him with a safety over the top. Some will bracket him from the slot. Some will drop eight and dare Ohio State to run. Some will get physical at the line, hold him when they think they can get away with it, and hope Sayin gets impatient.

That kind of attention is part of Smith’s Heisman case now. If two defenders follow him and Bo Jackson runs into a lighter box, Smith affected the play. If a safety shades his way and a switch release springs Mylan Graham or Brandon Inniss, Smith affected the play. The best player in the country should change the game before he even touches the ball.

The catch is that Heisman voters still need to see him touch it.

Smith knows that. After the Iowa win, he said he had to keep reminding voters that he’s the best player in the country. Then he admitted he was surprised he’d gone over 200 yards again.

Honestly, that combination feels about right. The campaign is real. The production is ridiculous. And the guy at the center of it still talks like this is just what happens when the ball finds him.

Jeremiah Smith hasn’t won the Heisman in two weeks. He still has six conference games ahead of him, along with every bit of the receiver tax that comes with being the favorite.

But the numbers are there. The moments are there. The ranked road win is there. The coaches who’ve tried to stop him are practically writing his campaign speech for him. Most importantly, the defenses knew exactly what Ohio State wanted to do, and still watched No. 4 take over the game.

Now the rest of the country has to catch him.

All stats courtesy of CFB Stats.

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