Ohio State football: Weapons on offense will help Jaxon Smith-Njigba explode
By Jacob Rhymer
The Ohio State football team has the best receiver in all of college football in Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He’s very capable of creating things on his own, but he will need some help from the other offensive threats if he wants to explode again this season.
Last season as the third option, Smith-Njigba had 1,606 receiving yards on 95 receptions along with 9 touchdowns. He put up unreal numbers all while behind two first-round NFL Draft picks in Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson. Now he takes on the role of being the number one option in an electric offense.
Smith-Njigba is going to have all the attention on him after his otherworldly performance in the Rose Bowl game against Utah last season. With all the focus on Smith-Njigba, Marvin Harrison Jr., Julian Fleming, and others are going to need to produce early and often.
Olave and Wilson were already locks to go in the first round of last year’s NFL Draft, but their draft stock rose with a little help from the play of Smith-Njigba. It’s already difficult to try and plan a defensive strategy against two highly talented wide receivers. It gets harder when you have to think about a third one.
I think we can be confident that Marvin Harrison Jr. and Julian Fleming are going to produce from the get-go. Harrison Jr. is an exquisite route runner and went for a hat trick of touchdowns in the Rose Bowl game. We’ve also heard a lot of great things about Fleming this off-season. Ryan Day has mentioned the former #1 overall recruit brought a lot of toughness each day this summer.
The one great thing that we all know about Ohio State football is they don’t rebuild, they reload. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is going to have an incredible year again, mainly from what he can do with his individual talents on the football field. However, a small part of his success this season will be because of the supporting cast around him.
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This Ohio State offense is going to be a juggernaut this season. We’ve had a lot of talented offenses come through Columbus over the years, but this group could be in the conversation as the most talented. After the long off-season wait, we finally get to see this electric offense in action tomorrow against #5 Notre Dame.