Curt Cignetti has coached around plenty of elite talent at Indiana, but Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith sits in a lane of his own.
That’s how the Hoosiers’ coach described the Buckeyes receiver on Monday, and he didn’t reach for a long explanation.
“Not only do they have a lot of excellent players they have a wow player,” Cignetti said Monday. “That’s really the only word to describe him that I can think of.”
It’s easy to see why. Smith is listed at 6-foot-4 and 222 pounds, and the production matches the measurables.
Through six games in 2026, he has piled up 48 catches for 916 yards and 11 touchdowns. He has been on the field for 20 quarters this season, which puts him on a ridiculous pace: 106 receptions, 2,015 yards and 24 touchdowns by the end of the regular season if that rate holds.
The bigger picture is even louder. In three college seasons, Smith has 211 catches for 3,474 yards and 38 touchdowns. Since entering college football in 2024, he leads all players in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns.
He also enters Saturday with Big Ten records in reach. Smith needs 315 receiving yards and two touchdowns to break the conference marks in those categories.
The Heisman conversation is starting to look just as lopsided. Only two wide receivers have won the award in the last 35 years, but Smith has separated himself from the field. He’s now listed at -220 on DraftKings and -210 on FanDuel, odds that point to better than a two-thirds chance of winning it all.
Indiana has already lived through this matchup twice, and the results have been far from disastrous. Smith had three catches for 34 yards in Columbus in 2024, then eight receptions for 144 yards in last season’s Big Ten title game. A big chunk of that came on a desperation Hail Mary.
There was a built-in edge for the Hoosiers in those games. D’Angelo Ponds, who went to high school with Smith, helped give Indiana confidence in coverage even though he was seven inches shorter.
That advantage is gone now. Ponds is off to the NFL, and Indiana’s cornerback play in 2026 has not been as firm. At the same time, Cignetti has watched Smith turn the volume up another notch and seen Ohio State move him around the formation more often.
“They move Jeremiah around quite a bit,” Cignetti said. “He’s taken it up a notch without question.
I think he has nine touchdown catches in the last three Power 4 games. You know, there is no one like him right now playing at this level.
“We got two really good ones (Charlie Becker and Nick Marsh). He’s a freak. We’re going to have to do a great job on him.”
For Indiana, the cleanest answer may not be stopping Smith at all. It may be getting to Julian Sayin before the quarterback can get the ball to him. In the 2025 Big Ten title game, the Hoosiers generated 14 pressures on Sayin and took him down five times.
Even that kind of day didn’t shut Smith down.
The Hoosiers can only hope to take away the wow-factor.
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