COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three kids wearing Ohio State football jerseys stood on top of a brick seat wall during the second practice of fall camp.
Buckeyes players stretched in lines more than 100 yards away.
“Where is he?” one of the kids asked.
Another tried to zoom in with his phone, but a video recording wouldn’t have captured the marvel he was searching for — not from that distance, anyway.
Then they spotted him: the 6-foot-3, 226-pound first-team All-American wide receiver from South Florida who goes by the name of Jeremiah Smith, “JJ” for short. He’s a 19-year-old sophomore who could play in the NFL yesterday if he were eligible.
As Smith stretched, his dreads hung over his face but not so far that they covered his famous No. 4, which now graces the video game cover of cult-classic-turned-online-arcade-phenomenon "EA Sports College Football."
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Moments later, he lined up to return punts with four other Ohio State players, including true freshman running back Anthony “Turbo” Rogers, whom Smith dwarfed by 5 inches. After Smith fielded his first punt, he jogged a handful of steps before nonchalantly darting a pass to a Buckeyes staffer as if he was hurling a whistling Nerf football. He then rejoined his punt-return teammates and chatted up a water-bottle-carrying trainer whose hat brim stared only halfway up the number on his jersey.
During “indy,” a period of individual drills performed by position groups, Smith showcased his graceful, almost balletic, change of direction, wrapping around a bag, running an in-cutting route, catching a pass, dropping it and then turning back upfield for a quick out before catching another ball.
A bit more than six months earlier, in the national title game, he dashed back to the backfield, where he was practically disguised, and then shot back out to the flat like a pinball, making him a wide-open target for a gentle, spiraling pass before waltzing in for Ohio State’s first touchdown in a 34-23 win over Notre Dame.
Smith’s combination of size and speed has drawn comparisons to that of Julio Jones, the No. 6 overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft who became a five-time All-Pro with the Atlanta Falcons.
While coaching Alabama’s receivers from 2007-10, now-Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti got an up-close look at Jones, an All-SEC honoree each of his three seasons with the Crimson Tide.
“Julio was also a great player,” Cignetti said at Big Ten media days last month, comparing the two wideouts. “Very similar, [Smith’s] a little looser, more flexible I think. Maybe a hair faster.”
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian deployed Jones during his NFL prime. As the Falcons’ offensive coordinator during the 2017-18 seasons, Sarkisian saw the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Jones combine for 201 catches, 3,121 receiving yards and 11 receiving touchdowns.
“Reminds me a lot of [Julio],” Sarkisian said of Smith on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” last month. “So big and physical but yet fast and then [the ability] to cover ground; so strong at the point of attack when the ball’s in the air, you see just the ability to make contested catches.”
Smith had 12 of those contested catches last season — tied for the sixth most of any Big Ten player, according to Pro Football Focus — en route to his 76 total receptions, 1,315 receiving yards and 15 receiving touchdowns.
“You cover him as well as you can and hope the ball’s not placed very well,” Cignetti said at Big Ten media days. “He’s a freak. He’s a great player. He’s the greatest at that position I’ve seen at that age.”
No team wrangled Smith better last season than Sarkisian’s Texas.
Ten days after tweaking his hip flexor, Smith embarrassed No. 1 Oregon in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals with 7 receptions, 187 receiving yards and 2 touchdowns, just about all of which came in the first half of a Rose Bowl romp. A week after that, Texas held him to only one grab and a measly 3 receiving yards in a tightly contested Cotton Bowl, which doubled as a CFP semifinal.
The Longhorns threw the kitchen sink at Ohio State: Cover 2, Tampa 2; they bracketed Smith with cone coverage and took away his deep threat with clouded coverage; they did everything they could to keep him in check and limit explosive plays.
The attention on Smith, however, allowed fellow Buckeyes wide receivers, namely Carnell Tate and Emeka Egbuka, to stack yards over the middle of the field. While Ohio State certainly doesn’t want Smith to ever be taken away by an opponent quite like that again, his impact without the football in his hands is hard to ignore.
Smith doesn’t always get the ball in practice, either. Granted it was just the second day of fall camp, and a lighter day overall, but he wasn’t involved much for chunks of periods. During one 11-on-11 rep, Smith blocked for slot receiver Brandon Inniss downfield, staying stride-for-stride with a first-year safety. The next play, Smith gave top Buckeyes corner Davison Igbinosun a double move, but the ball didn’t come his way.
As for the position drills, he hardly ever goes first, second or third despite his stature. Instead, he stands in the back like the new kid at school, observing his position coach’s teachings.
“He just always wants to learn,” Buckeyes wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator Brian Hartline said. “As a coach, you can't baby him. You can't put him on a pedestal. He does not want that. There have been opportunities to maybe finish more without the ball in your hands, turn upfield — I identify it, and he applies it.”
Hartline added: “He's always trying to contribute, whether he knows there's a decoy-ish mentality or a blocking mentality 'cause he's a big guy or whatever that role is. He just loves learning the why and then applying it in that role, in that play.”
Then there are practices where Smith is in the spotlight — like the first day in pads on Aug. 2 — when he teased a potentially dynamite connection with another former five-star prospect from the 2024 class, quarterback Julian Sayin.
Despite being draped in coverage by second-year corner Bryce West, Smith reached out his left claw to retrieve the downfield pass from Sayin and make a diving, one-handed catch.
On his speedrun from top player in high school football to top player in college football, Smith turned heads, including at Michigan State with not one, but two one-handed catches, and then he added another the following week against Iowa.
He expects even more from himself in Year 2.
“Last year, certain games I'd hesitate doing certain things, not really going full speed,” Smith said. “But this year, I know what to expect and know how to do it. So it's going to be scary this year, for sure.”
Smith said he's better at identifying coverages now. Like Inniss and Tate, he’s more vocal — although he said he’s “not overdoing it” and remains more of a lead-by-example kind of guy — and, of course, he’s even bigger and stronger than he was in 2024.
Maybe where he needs the most practice is handling off-the-field stardom. Smith’s life-changing ascent up the sports ladder has even made trips to Target impractical.
“I'm still young, so I'm still trying to figure it out,” Smith said. “Yeah, it has been pretty hard for me. I like to go out and shop like that. I've been doing it since I was a little kid. I like to go with my parents. Every time they went to the grocery store, I always went.”
Now he’s smothered everywhere, just like he is by determined defenses on the field. Smith was swarmed for autographs after that second fall practice.
He’ll face a different kind of coverage on Aug. 30 when Texas comes to town for a Cotton Bowl rematch.
“I'm definitely hyped by this one, especially how things went last year,” Smith said. “Things people saying about me, about that game I had last year [against] them, so I'm definitely hungry for this one.”
Sarkisian noted in his interview on “The Herd” last month: “You better know where No. 4 is at all times."
That goes for opposing teams, and it goes for those three kids standing on top of that brick seat wall at Ohio State's fall camp.
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