Jeremiah Smith posted his second straight 200-plus yard performance Saturday afternoon against Iowa to help lead Ohio State to a 31-14 road victory. But where does he rank among the greatest of all time?
What sets legends apart is the ability to produce even when the other team knows you’re going to win the ball. In his first two years, it could be argued that Smith benefited from being part of an elite receiving corps that forced opponents to pick their poison. This year, he is the engine and leads the offense for five games.
Smith has 44 catches for 823 receiving yards and nine touchdowns in five games. Ohio State’s second-leading receiver was Devin McCuin, with 17 catches for 245 yards and two touchdowns. Every defense knows that Julian Sayin wants to throw the ball to No. 4, and no one — even strong defenses like Texas and Iowa — have been able to force Sayin to look elsewhere.
It’s the kind of dominance reserved for the game’s hyper elite, and it puts Smith in a rare position among the best receivers college football has seen in recent memory.
We’ve rounded up our top 10 receivers from the last 26 years in college football, where productivity matters, but that involves a considerable amount of eye testing.
The 10 best wide receivers of the 21st century
1. Larry Fitzgerald
The 2003 People’s Heisman winner, Larry Fitzgerald, was one of the most astonishing combinations of size, speed, hands and body control the game has ever seen. His NFL Hall of Fame career is what most fans remember now, but in college, Fitzgerald was doing outrageous things almost every week in Pittsburgh — which wasn’t exactly a dominant football team. Every game, every opponent knew the ball was going to go to No. 1, and it didn’t matter.
2. Calvin Johnson
No one on this roster played in a less receiver-friendly situation than Johnson, but one could argue that that only furthered his legend. Johnson was dominant from the moment he took the court in Atlanta. He did this despite playing in what was a run-heavy offense with a quarterback who never completed more than 50% of his passes in Johnson’s three years, but the inaccuracy of the quarterback position also helped Johnson show off his insane catch radius and athleticism that made Megatron an all-time great at the NFL level as well.
3. Jeremiah Smith
If he continues at the same pace for the rest of the season, he will have a strong argument for the top spot on this list. What sets Smith apart is his dominance from the moment he stepped foot on Ohio State’s campus. Despite walking into a receiving room full of future NFL talent, Smith surpassed 1,000 yards as a freshman and has only improved since then. If he can maintain the breakneck pace he’s currently at (or even get close to it), he could very well rise to the top of this list.
4. DeVonta Smith
The only receiver to win the Heisman Trophy this century, Smith’s 2020 campaign at Alabama was a record. His 117 catches, 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns all led the nation in one of the best receiving seasons in history.
Smith’s slightness raised questions at the pro level (which he answered emphatically in Philadelphia), but in college he was nowhere to be found in his final two seasons at Alabama and is at the top of the list.
5. Justin Blackmon
Blackmon’s NFL career made many people forget just how dominant he was at Oklahoma State.
During his sophomore and junior seasons, he totaled 233 catches, 3,304 yards and 38 touchdowns, earning consecutive Biletnikoff Awards and All-America honors.
Even understanding that he was playing in a passing-heavy offense, those were absurd numbers, and he more than looked the part with his physical attributes.
It didn’t translate to the NFL level for some reason, but Blackmon deserves to be remembered as one of the best we’ve seen at the college level.
6. Charles Rogers
Another NFL bust and a tragic story off the field, Rogers’ time at Michigan State was nothing short of incredible.
He didn’t play on particularly good Spartans teams during his two years in East Lansing, but he was a physically dominant receiver with tremendous size, speed and jumping ability.
In two years in the early 2000s, Rogers rushed for 2,551 yards and 25 touchdowns on just 125 catches, making the most of limited opportunities to earn the second overall pick in the 2003 NFL Draft.
7. Michael Crabtree
Crabtree’s freshman season was one of the all-time greats in college football history, with 134 catches for 1,962 yards and 22 touchdowns. He played in an offense designed for enormous productivity under Mike Leach at Texas Tech, but he was undeniably a monster and absolutely tortured Big 12 defenses during his two years in Lubbock.
Crabtree accumulated two All-American nominations, two Biletnikoff Awards and a fifth-place Heisman finish as a sophomore – ironically his least productive of his two seasons in college.
8. Braylon Edwards
Michigan hasn’t often been known as a high-flying passing attack, but when Edwards was in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines had one of the elite pass catchers in the country.
Edwards had three seasons with 1,000+ yards and 10+ touchdowns during his career with the Wolverines.
What’s amazing is going back and looking at Edwards’ highlights, where the Wolverines are consistently at 22 with Edwards as the only wide receiver, and he was still able to produce consistently, even as the only possible deep ball threat on the field.
9. Ja’Marr Chase
Chase actually only had one season of elite level play in college football, but what a season it was.
He racked up 84 catches for 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns as part of LSU’s all-time great offense during the Tigers’ 2019 national championship-winning season.
The Tigers have had their share of elite receivers, but none have dominated the college ranks to the same level as Chase. You know someone had special talent when they could actually have a huge year, opt out of the next season and still be drafted No. 5 overall.
10. Amari Cooper
Cooper had a 1,000-yard season as a freshman on the Alabama national team in 2012, and as a junior he rushed for more than 1,700 yards and 16 touchdowns in a season that landed him third in Heisman Trophy voting.
Like a handful of others on this list, Cooper didn’t live up to his superstar status in the NFL, but at the college level he was a monster for the Tide.
Honorable mention
Julio Jones, AJ Green, Andre Johnson, Sammy Watkins, Malik Nabers, Roy Williams, Travis Hunter
I’ll be honest, I don’t feel good about having a roster without Julio Jones, AJ Green, or Andre Johnson, but I’ve also had a hard time taking anyone off the roster. Turns out there have been a lot more than 10 great receivers over the past 26 years in college football.
Jones was obviously a monster, but Alabama’s productivity wasn’t quite on par with those in the top 10 – Jones was never an All-American, which shocked me as I looked through the profiles. The same caveat applies to Green and Johnson, and all three went on to have dominant professional careers.
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