Ohio State Football: Can Garrett Wilson follow in Chris Olave’s footsteps?

The Ohio State football team will have a stacked receiver room in 2020, so how much of a jump will we see from Garrett Wilson?

Garrett Wilson had a pretty good freshman year at wide receiver for the Ohio State football team as he caught 30 passes for 432 yards and five touchdowns. We all saw sophomore Chris Olave make a huge jump in his production in 2019, so could Wilson follow in his footsteps in 2020?

I think so.

Olave didn’t have nearly as much production as a freshman in 2018, catching 12 passes for 197 yards and three touchdowns. However, with Parris Campbell, Terry McLaurin and Johnnie Dixon each graduating after the 2018 season, Olave had a really big year in 2019, catching 48 passes for 840 yards and 12 touchdowns.

For Wilson, he played a nice role on an already stacked receiving corp in 2019, but, like Olave with Campbell, McLaurin and Dixon, Wilson will also have a chance to step into a bigger role in 2020 with key 2019 seniors graduating.

Last year, senior K.J. Hill caught 57 passes for 636 yards and 10 touchdowns while Binjimen Victor caught 35 passes for 573 yards. With them both being gone in 2020 that will be more than 1,200 receiving yards missing from the team, so you can expect Wilson to be catching a lot more passes in their place.

Olave will most likely be quarterback Justin Fields’ No. 1 option after catching the second-most passes to Hill last year. There are some really talented freshmen coming in too including two five stars in Julian Fleming and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but if Fields relied on Wilson heavily as a freshman I am sure he will rely on him even more in Wilson’s sophomore season.

This receiving group will be fun to watch in 2020 and could be the most talented receiving unit in the country, especially with Fields having another year under his belt. Wilson will definitely be a big part of that group’s success too, similar to how Olave was in his sophomore year.