Jeremiah Smith's early dominance sparks debate over college football's greatest receivers

Jeremiah Smith posted his second consecutive 200-plus yard performance on Saturday afternoon against Iowa to help lead Ohio State to a 31-14 road win. But where does he rank among the all-time greats?

What separates the legends is the ability to produce even when the other team knows you are going to get the football. In his first two years, you could argue 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 is carrying the offense through five games.

Smith has 44 catches for 823 receiving yards and nine touchdowns through five games. The next-best receiver for Ohio State has been 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 stout defenses like Texas and Iowa -- has been able to force Sayin to look anywhere else.

That's the kind of dominance reserved for the game's hyper elite, and it puts Smith in rare air among the best receivers college football has seen in recent memory.

We put together our top 10 receivers of the last 26 years in college football, where productivity matters, but there is a considerable amount of eye-test involved.

The 10 best wide receivers of the 21st century

1. Larry Fitzgerald

The people's Heisman winner in 2003, Larry Fitzgerald, was one of the most stunning combinations of size, speed, hands and body control the game's ever seen. His Hall-of-Fame NFL career is what most fans remember now, but in college Fitzgerald was doing outrageous things on a near-weekly basis at 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 one bit.

2. Calvin Johnson

No one on this list played in a less receiver-friendly situation than Johnson, but one could argue that it only grew his legend. Johnson was dominant from the moment he stepped onto the field in Atlanta. He did that in spite of 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 from 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 on the pace he's on the rest of this season, he's going to have a strong argument for this list's top spot. What makes Smith stand out is his dominance from the moment he set foot on campus at Ohio State. Despite coming into a stacked receiver room with future NFL talent, Smith topped 1,000 yards as a freshman and has only improved since then. If he can maintain the outrageous pace he's on now (or even come close to it), he can absolutely climb to the very top of this list.

4. DeVonta Smith

The only receiver to win the Heisman Trophy this century, Smith's 2020 campaign at Alabama was an all-timer. His 117 catches, 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns all led the nation in one of the best receiving seasons in history.

Smith's slight frame raised questions at the pro level (which he's answered emphatically in Philly), but in college, he was uncoverable in his final two seasons at Alabama and belongs near the top of any list.

5. Justin Blackmon

Blackmon's NFL career has made many people forget how dominant he was at Oklahoma State.

In his sophomore and junior seasons, he combined for 233 catches, 3,304 yards and 38 touchdowns, winning back-to-back Biletnikoff awards and All-America honors.

Even understanding he was playing in a pass-heavy offense, those were preposterous numbers, and he more than looked the part with his physical attributes.

That didn't translate at the NFL level for whatever reason, but Blackmon deserves to be remembered as one of the best we've seen at the collegiate level.

6. Charles Rogers

Another NFL bust and a tragic off-field story, Rogers' time at Michigan State was nothing short of incredible.

He was not playing on particularly good Spartans squads in his two years of actually playing in East Lansing, but he was a physically dominant receiver with tremendous size, speed and leaping ability.

Over two years in the early 2000s, Rogers piled up 2,551 yards and 25 touchdowns on just 125 catches, making the most of limited opportunities to earn the No. 2 overall pick in the 2003 NFL Draft.

7. Michael Crabtree

Crabtree's freshman season is 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 that was tailored to huge productivity under Mike Leach at Texas Tech, but he was undeniably a freak and absolutely tortured Big 12 defenses for his two years in Lubbock.

Crabtree racked up a pair of All-American nods, 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 has not often been known as a high-flying passing attack, but when Edwards was in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines had one of the nation's elite pass catchers.

Edwards put together three seasons with over 1,000 yards and more than 10 touchdowns over his career with the Wolverines.

What's incredible is going back and watching Edwards's highlights, where the Wolverines are regularly in 22 personnel with Edwards as the lone receiver split out wide, and he was still able to produce consistently, even as the only possible deep-ball threat on the field.

9. Ja'Marr Chase

Chase really 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 in the Tigers' 2019 national championship-winning season.

The Tigers have had their share of elite receivers, but none dominated the college ranks at the same level as Chase. You know someone was a special talent when they could effectively put up one huge year, opt out of the next season and still get drafted No. 5 overall.

10. Amari Cooper

Cooper had a 1,000-yard season as a freshman on Alabama's 2012 national title team and as a junior put up more than 1,700 yards and 16 touchdowns in a season that earned him third-place in Heisman Trophy voting.

Like a handful of others on this list, Cooper didn't quite live up to the billing as a superstar in the NFL, but at the collegiate level, he was a monster for the Tide.

Honorable mention

Julio Jones, A.J. Green, Andre Johnson, Sammy Watkins, Malik Nabers, Roy Williams, Travis Hunter

I'll be honest, I do not feel good about having a list without Julio Jones, A.J. Green or Andre Johnson, but I also struggled to take anyone off of the list. As it turns out, there have been a lot more than just 10 great wide receivers over the past 26 years in college football.

Jones was obviously a freak but the productivity at Alabama wasn't quite at the level of those in the top 10 -- Jones was never an All-American, which shocked me going back through profiles. The same caveat applies to Green and Johnson, and all three went on to dominant professional careers.