Jeremiah Smith has turned his junior year into a stretch that keeps getting harder for draft rooms to set aside. The Ohio State receiver sits as the betting favorite to go No. 1 overall in the 2027 NFL Draft, listed at around 27%. Larry Fitzgerald has now placed him in a company that almost never gets used this early.
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Ohio State beat Illinois 42-19 on September 26, and Smith finished with 12 receptions for 217 yards and four touchdowns. All three marks were career highs, and the four scores tied the school single-game receiving-touchdown record.
That game handed Fitzgerald a picture of size, production, and the way Smith can wear a defense down. Fitzgerald spent 17 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, finished with 1,432 catches, and entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
“He’s an absolute mutant. I mean, I hear a lot of comparisons. I just think about him as Calvin Johnson because Calvin Johnson was the same: 6’4″, 230 pounds. He could run every single route in a route tree. He was incredibly difficult to tackle. And I see a lot of those comparisons because they’re both like physical freaks and also have that killer mindset that he has.” Fitzgerald made the remarks on The Rich Eisen Show.
“And he scored four touchdowns last week. I remember seeing the defensive back talking to him, and he just completely broke their will. And he’s going to take the league by storm when he gets in there next year.”
Johnson played the same position at Georgia Tech, then went No. 2 overall to the Detroit Lions in 2007. He closed his career with 731 receptions, 11,619 yards, and 83 touchdowns, and he entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021. At Georgia Tech, he had 178 catches for 2,927 yards and 28 scores. Smith’s own file is already starting to support talk at that level.
The 2026 numbers make the projection easier to follow. Through four games, Smith has 33 receptions for 617 yards and seven touchdowns, at 18.7 yards per catch. He leads the country in receiving yards and is averaging around 154 yards a game. The Kent State game was the one that pushed him past the school career receiving yards mark.
In the Illinois game, Smith became the first Ohio State player to post at least 10 receptions, 200 receiving yards, and four touchdown catches in the same game. The four scores tied the single-game record, and it was the first four-touchdown receiving game by a Big Ten player since 2015. He also crossed 3,000 career receiving yards in that game, the first Buckeye to do so.
Against Kent State on September 19, Smith passed Michael Jenkins’ 2,898 yards and became Ohio State’s all-time leader in receiving yards. He is nine catches short of Emeka Egbuka’s school record of 205 and one touchdown short of Chris Olave’s mark of 35.
The longer resume explains why the praise is not tied to just one season. Smith broke the FBS freshman receiving-yards record in 2024 and also holds the true-freshman receiving-touchdown record from that season. Ohio State won the CFP national title that year, and he was a unanimous All-American in 2025 and has won Big Ten Receiver of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
Through his first two years, he led the country in both receiving yards and touchdowns. Since 2024, he has more than 3,170 receiving yards and 34 scores, with no other FBS player within roughly 900 yards.
Other voices have found themselves in the same place. Nick Saban, on The Rich Eisen Show around September 28, called Smith “one of the most dominant players in college football,” said he reminds him of Julio Jones in size and strength, and predicted a fantastic NFL career.
Those high praises and comparisons are already moving the 2027 boards. ESPN’s Jordan Reid, The Athletic, PFF, and several other outlets list Smith as the No. 1 overall prospect or the clear top wide receiver.
The main pushback is positional value. Arch Manning, Dante Moore, CJ Carr, and Darian Mensah are the quarterbacks most often mentioned near the top. Elite defenders such as Notre Dame corner Leonard Moore and Texas edge Colin Simmons also draw first-round talk. No wide receiver has gone No. 1 overall since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996.