Ohio State wide receiver sensation Jeremiah Smith is not worried about the ongoing quarterback competition between Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz for the Buckeyes. The battle was “neck and neck” this spring, according to coach Ryan Day, but Smith said Ohio State’s full arsenal of weaponry around the position is more than enough to guarantee success for the defending national champions.
“It really doesn’t matter who is the quarterback,” Smith said this week at Big Ten Media Days. “Whoever is the quarterback, they’ll have great tools around them to be successful. It’s really up to them on how things play out. But, I know both … guys. Whoever it is, is going to have a great career and great season.”
Smith, a former No. 1 overall recruit in the 2024 cycle, led the Buckeyes last season with 76 catches for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns, doing much of his damage in the College Football Playoff.
His touchdown total was a Big Ten freshman record and the most by any FBS first-year player since Michael Crabtree’s impressive showing at Texas Tech in 2007.
Smith has a chance to become the first player in Big Ten history to post consecutive seasons with 15 or more scores with another statistically dominant campaign at Ohio State.
“I’m going to be able to play faster than I did my freshman year,” Smith said. “Freshman year, you think you know a lot about football, then you get there and you actually don’t. But, this year, I know what’s going on. I understand offense more. I will be able to play faster this year.”
The expectation is that Sayin, a redshirt freshman, will be Ohio State’s starter, but that’s no guarantee. Unlike many quarterback competitions across the country this spring, the Buckeyes’ battle was not an intentional slow play from Day. His reluctancy to name a frontrunner coming out of the spring game speaks to the competition between Sayin and Kienholz, a third-year sophomore.
Sayin is a former five-star recruit and the third-ranked quarterback from the 2024 recruiting cycle, per 247Sports, who initially signed with Alabama before transferring to Columbus last January. Kienholz, a multi-sport all-state star in high school out of South Dakota, signed with the Buckeyes as a member of their 2023 class.
Day updated his quarterback situation this week but did not reveal which player has the edge approaching fall camp.
“They’ve been throwing with the wide receivers. I ask those guys all the time, and they like both of them. We’re going to put them in as many competitive situations as we possibly can to figure out who handles that the best,” Day said. “We’ve got to be on point Week 1. We can’t be messing around. I know that we’ll need all of those guys in that room this year. When you look at Will [Howard], he was a guy who was an older guy, who was experienced, and he was able to sustain the entire season. That’s not always the way it is.
“We have to build depth in that room as well,” he continued. “I’ve got a feeling they’ll all play throughout the season, but it will be a fierce competition to be who the starter is.”
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