Jeremiah Smith vs. Ohio State’s Receiver Legends: How Does He Stack Up to Cris Carter and Terry Glenn?

Jeremiah Smith put any remaining doubt to rest on Saturday about who the most dominant receiver in college football is right now. In Ohio State’s 31-14 win over Iowa, Smith caught 11 passes for 206 yards and two touchdowns — his second straight 200-yard performance — and in the process became Ohio State’s all-time leader in both career receptions and career receiving touchdowns, just two weeks after claiming the career receiving yards record. He now sits alone atop all three major career categories, something no Ohio State receiver has ever accomplished. So the natural question becomes: has anyone in program history ever actually played like this? And just as interestingly, has Ohio State ever had a receiver with Smith’s kind of talent who simply never got the chance to prove it?

Why Jeremiah Smith Is Genuinely in a League of His Own

The short answer is that nobody has matched Smith’s combination of immediate dominance and sustained production. He broke Cris Carter’s Ohio State freshman records in his very first season, catching 76 passes for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns in 2024. He followed that up with another 1,000-plus-yard season in 2025, and through just five games in 2026, he’s already racked up 44 receptions, 823 yards, and 9 touchdowns — numbers that, for comparison, blow past Heisman winner DeVonta Smith’s full-season Alabama national championship stats (45 catches, 445 yards, 4 touchdowns) despite Smith doing it in roughly a third of the games. In less than three full seasons, Jeremiah Smith has rewritten Ohio State’s entire receiving record book. No one else in program history has done that at anywhere close to the same speed.

The Closest Comparison for Talent: Cris Carter

If there’s one Ohio State receiver whose pure talent level invites comparison to Smith, it’s Cris Carter. Playing from 1984 to 1986, Carter became Ohio State’s first-ever All-American wide receiver, known for acrobatic, highlight-reel catches that still get replayed decades later — including a sideline grab so spectacular that longtime Ohio State radio voice Paul Karsatos called it the greatest catch in college football history. Carter finished his career with 168 receptions, 2,725 yards, and 27 touchdowns, and he’s still widely regarded as one of the most naturally gifted pass-catchers to ever wear scarlet and gray.

But here’s the catch: Carter played in a run-first, option-heavy offense under head coach Earle Bruce, an era when Ohio State simply didn’t throw the football nearly as often as modern offenses do. Even so, Carter still managed to put up 1,127 receiving yards in 1986 — the fourth-best single-season total in school history at the time — almost entirely on pure talent and opportunism rather than scheme design. Had Carter played in today’s spread, pass-heavy college football landscape, with the same volume of targets Smith receives, it’s not hard to imagine his numbers looking a lot closer to Smith’s. Carter is, in many ways, the clearest example of a receiver whose production was shaped as much by the team around him as his own ability.

The Clearest “What Could Have Been” Story: Terry Glenn

If Carter represents a receiver limited by his era’s offensive system, Terry Glenn represents something even more specific to your question: a receiver who had the talent all along but simply wasn’t given the opportunity to show it. Glenn walked on to Ohio State’s program in 1993, and across his first two seasons, he caught just 15 total passes for 265 yards combined — essentially buried on the depth chart and not trusted with significant playing time.

Then, in 1995, everything changed. Given a real opportunity for the first time, Glenn exploded for 64 receptions, 1,411 receiving yards, and 17 touchdowns — numbers that still stand today as the single greatest statistical season by a wide receiver in Ohio State history. That 17-touchdown mark remains a school record. Glenn’s breakout was so complete that he won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver, the only Ohio State receiver to ever win it. His story is essentially proof of concept for your theory: a player with legitimate star-level talent who simply needed the team and coaching staff to actually feature him before that talent could show up in the numbers.

Why Jeremiah Smith Never Had to Wait

What makes Smith’s story so remarkable, by contrast, is that he never had a Terry Glenn-style waiting period. Ohio State handed him a starring role from the very first game of his college career, and he immediately delivered at a level that neither Carter nor Glenn ever got the chance to sustain over a full career. Smith’s cousin, Marvin Harrison Jr., and recent Ohio State standouts like Chris Olave and Emeka Egbuka, also built strong Ohio State legacies, but even they needed a year or two to develop into the focal point of the passing attack. Smith skipped that developmental period entirely.

So, Has Anyone Ever Really Played Like Jeremiah Smith?

Putting it all together, the honest answer is no — not in terms of combining immediate, sustained, record-setting production the way Smith has. Carter had the talent but played in the wrong system for his specific skill set. Glenn had the talent but didn’t get the opportunity until his third year on campus. Smith has had both the talent and the opportunity from day one, which is exactly why he’s already rewritten records that took other legendary Ohio State receivers entire careers, or in some cases never came within reach at all.

What This Means for Ohio State’s Receiver Legacy Going Forward

Smith’s current trajectory suggests he won’t just be remembered as Ohio State’s best receiver of this generation — he’s on pace to be remembered as the standard every future Buckeye receiver gets measured against, the way Carter and Glenn were measured against each other for decades before him. Whether any future Ohio State recruit can ever match this level of immediate, historic production remains to be seen, but for now, Jeremiah Smith stands entirely alone at the top of a program with no shortage of legendary names at the position.