Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba combined for 3,600/4,952 (73%) of Ohio State’s team passing yards as well as 34/46 (74%) of total passing TDs. Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson have gone down as two of the best Buckeye receivers ever after going back-to-back in the NFL Draft at number 10 and 11 overall. Jaxon on the other hand, who was the most productive of the three, will be back in Columbus for his junior season where he’s been named a team captain and he’s one of the favorites to bring home the Biletnikoff Award. Let’s take a deeper look into each of these players and why we may have just witnessed the best WR room in the history of college football.
Chris Olave
Olave arrived at Ohio State as an 18-year-old freshman in 2018 where he learned behind senior captains Terry McLaurin and Parris Campbell amongst other upperclassmen. He then proceeded to snag two TDs on two catches in the biggest rivalry in college football: Ohio State vs. Michigan at the end of his freshman year. The next season he exploded, as a 19-year-old sophomore, he earned a 23% market share in a five-man rotation WR room with three seniors. Olave led the team in TDs and receiving yards by over 200 total yards after immediately developing a great rapport with new QB Justin Fields.
Olave followed that up as a junior with an even more impressive year amidst a weird Covid season as he jumped from a 23% to a 34.7% market share and from 64 yards per game to 104 yards per game. He also jumped from 3.07 YPRR (yards per route run) as a sophomore to 3.44 YPRR as a junior. For context, anything over 2.75 YPRR is pretty good and over 3.0 is great. He runs as crisp routes as anybody in the class as he utilizes leverage off the line and at each level of his routes to create ample separation and easy pitch and catches for his QB. After another great senior season, Chris Olave was just selected 11th overall in the NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. Putting together one of the best careers of any OSU WR ever, Olave is an extremely safe bet to hit in the NFL and be a productive WR for years to come. He should be viewed as a top-5 receiver in this rookie class with plenty of them to go around. I would be targeting Olave in the 1.07 or later range in rookie drafts this dynasty off-season.
Garrett Wilson
Wilson, who’s originally from Columbus Ohio, moved to Texas to improve his game against the best high school competition in the country at Lake Travis. He made this move knowing he’d be headed back up to Ohio to play his college ball for the Buckeyes. Wilson came into a deep receiver room filled with seniors and after a solid freshman season he broke out as a sophomore with 43 catches for 723 yards and six TDs in eight games with a 34.4% market share. He combines impressive route running ability with an incredible catch radius and 4.4 speed; it’s hard to find a weakness in his game.
He’s been elite vs man coverage every year of his career never averaging under 3.1 YPRR vs. man coverage but as a sophomore, in Fields’ second season Garrett Wilson averaged an absurd 5.57 YPRR vs. man coverage. He made countless highlight plays, showing his ability to consistently and effortlessly win one on one matchups and jump balls. Many people have him as the overall WR1 in the ‘22 class but I have slotted him as the second-best receiver only because he doesn’t have the size of Treylon Burks but where Garrett makes up for it is his ability to get open and Garrett also plays much bigger than his size would indicate. I would feel extremely comfortable drafting him anywhere from 1.03 or later in rookie drafts.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
By the time Jaxon graduated high school he was third all-time in receiving yards in Texas high school football history. Coming off a record-shattering sophomore campaign, Jaxon Smith-Njigba has huge expectations going into next season which will be his second with quarterback CJ Stroud. During Jaxon’s first year as a full-time starter, he broke the single-season B1G receiving yards record previously held by Wisconsin Badger, Lee Evans, which he set in 2001.
Jaxon finished with a stat line of 95 catches for 1,606 yards and nine TDs in 13 games. And what’s even scarier is that he has another year to refine his game before hearing his name called almost inevitably in the top-10 of the 2023 NFL Draft. He was the best WR on Ohio State this past season and he was playing with two upperclassmen, both of whom were just first-round picks. Some people think it’s an indictment on Olave or Wilson that he outperformed them but to me, it speaks volumes about the talent he has and the potential he possesses moving forward in his football career. Jaxon is in a tier of his own for the 2023 class and he is one of the most valuable assets in the devy community, if you have the ability to acquire him and opt against it you are probably missing a Justin Jefferson/CeeDee Lamb level prospect. Even with a year of college football to still play I would value JSN as a top 12 dynasty WR right now before even stepping foot on an NFL field.
Marvin Harrison Jr.
His name might ring a bell already, even though he appeared sparingly during his true freshman season. Marvin blew up in the Rose Bowl, catching the nation’s attention after his six-catch 71 yards, and three touchdown outing vs Utah. Marv was 6’3” and over 200 lbs. as a freshman but what makes him so special is that with his huge frame; he combines that with his Hall of Fame father’s footwork. Somebody at his size shouldn’t have the quick-twitch movements in his route tree that he regularly demonstrates which is why he can get open with such ease.
The combination of size, strength, speed, and footwork makes him an incredibly tough cover, but we have only seen him scratch the surface of his potential so far. Marvin is a receiver that wins at all three levels of the field in a multitude of ways and as he continues to refine his game over the next few years the sky’s the limit. He’s being drafted comfortably inside the top-24 picks in devy startups but even that feels too low, Marvin is currently a consensus top-3 WR in the ‘24 class with the ability to reach the top spot pending his breakout sophomore season coming around.
I highlight some of the best receivers in college football in this piece, but I’d be remiss to not mention the fact that in 2020, Jameson Williams was also a part of the Buckeye WR room. Ohio State, in the 2022 NFL Draft had three former teammates go in consecutive order at 10th, 11th, and 12th in the first round which has never been done before by another University. The fact he had to transfer to Alabama of all places, in order to get playing time, tells you everything you need to know about how talented the Buckeyes’ WR room has been the past few seasons.
Thanks for reading, I combine film and analytics-based evaluations, hunting for the best values in Dynasty FF and Devy. Find me on Twitter @Quintorris_.
