How Texas cooled Ohio State football's Jeremiah Smith amid his hot postseason stretch

How Texas cooled Ohio State football’s Jeremiah Smith amid his hot postseason stretch

Posted by Admin January 11, 2025 Football

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ARLINGTON, Texas — During the celebration following Ohio State’s 28-14 win over Texas in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Cotton Bowl on Friday night, Jeremiah Smith encountered Longhorns safety Michael Taaffe.

As they met on the field at AT&T Stadium, Smith found out how committed the Longhorns had been to stopping him.

“My only job was to not let you over the top,” Taaffe told him.

Taaffe dropped deep in zone coverage and floated toward Smith’s side of the field, helping to double-team him during frequent stretches.

After Smith burned the secondaries of Oregon and Tennessee deep in previous rounds, the Longhorns sought to avoid a repeat performance, devoting significant attention to the freshman receiving phenom, limiting his involvement. Smith caught only one pass for 3 yards, the first time in 15 games he did not have multiple receptions.

“It was pretty frustrating the whole game,” Smith said, “but was just trusting the coaches and my teammates to get the job done.”

For all his feats during a dazzling debut season, few defenses had given him this type of treatment, and with Texas’ top-ranked secondary having no shortage of talent, led by Jim Thorpe Award winner Jahdae Barron, he did not expect to see as much double coverage.

But from Ohio State’s first drive, Smith recognized he was drawing multiple defenders and seeing safety help.

When he ran a deep post out the slot, safety Andrew Mukuba continued backpedaling until the ball arrived just shy of the end zone. Mukuba kept Smith in front of him as the pass fell incomplete.

“They weren’t going to let me go deep or take any shots,” Smith said.

In the Buckeyes’ previous playoff wins, Smith was an explosive vertical threat, taking the top off the defenses. He combined 13 receptions for 290 yards and four touchdowns against Oregon and Tennessee.

As he stood in front of his stall in the locker room in the aftermath of the semifinal triumph, Smith acknowledged Texas had schemed up a variety of effective coverages, but seemed at least a little miffed with the deployment.

“It shows a lot of respect,” he said, “but DBs should be able to play us 1-on-1.”

Even if Smith was less of a factor, it did not keep the Buckeyes from moving on to the final. All the attention on him left quarterback Will Howard to lean on other playmakers, connecting with another target on 23 of his 24 completions.

On Ohio State’s go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, Howard found Carnell Tate to move the chains on third down. Taaffe stayed on the other side of the field to support Barron in coverage of Smith, leaving Tate and others in single coverage.

“They were trying to take him away,” Howard said, “and I knew that we were going to have to check the ball down and get the ball to our other guys.”

Howard ended up targeting Smith only three times, a trio of passes that also included an interception on the opening series of the second half. He attempted to a drop a pass into the zone, but it did not get past linebacker David Gbenda, who picked it off.

It was the last time Howard targeted him as Texas continued leaving a safety over the top.

“You watch what he did in the first two rounds of the playoffs,” Howard said, “and I probably would have done it too.”

Smith said he became helpful for the offense as a decoy.

“It’s probably not the best game I had,” Smith said, “but being able to go to the natty as a freshman is something special.”

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @joeyrkaufman or email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com.