If you know Carnell Tate, you know the talented junior Ohio State wide receiver is a bit on the quieter side.
Unlike his fellow wide receiver Brandon Inniss, you likely won’t see a lot of rah-rah antics from him or fiery speeches. His preference is to keep mostly to himself and let his actions on the field do the talking for him.
But the upperclassman has made it a priority this offseason to step out of his comfort zone. Tate didn’t have to speak up much last season, as Emeka Egbuka and Inniss were often the most vocal wideouts en route to the Buckeyes winning the national title. Yet on the first day of spring practice in March, Tate surveyed the field.
Egbuka was gone. Jack Sawyer was gone. JT Tuimoloau had also departed, along with many other seniors from 2024. He realized he was one of the elder statesmen on OSU’s roster which is loaded with talent, yet is also inexperienced in many areas.
“This isn’t last year’s team,” Tate said Friday of why he challenged himself to take more of a leadership role. “We’ve got a lot of young guys. We have to grow up as a team and become more mature. Everybody has to take that next step.”
During Big Ten Media Days in late July, Ryan Day was asked who on his roster had grown the most as a leader. After some reflection, Day said the junior wide receiver from Chicago has “taken the biggest step as a leader.” Brian Hartline, Tate’s position coach his first two years in Columbus and now his offensive coordinator, agreed with Day’s assessment.
“Ultimately, players choose to do things. We can recommend and suggest all we want, but ultimately players are responsible for making plays and making changes,” Hartline said. “So, yeah, I would agree with coach, he made huge strides. I love him for it, he's the right kind of guy for it, he's the right kind of role. Really no-BS kind of guy, a lot of guys have a lot of respect for him … I'm glad those conversations I had were received, and I'm glad to see he's really taking the reins of it and ran with it.”
Tate’s off-field personality differs from Inniss’ just as the former is accustomed to playing on the outside and the latter finds himself in the slot more often than not. Still, Tate has received praise from the Buckeyes’ most outgoing wideout for how he’s challenged himself and approached being a leader to younger receivers.
“He's developed a lot,” Brandon Inniss said. “If y'all know Carnell, he's not a very vocal guy, but he's developed a lot. He's stepping up and saying things every single day and that's something we challenged him over the summer since the wintertime. We had me and Emeka Egbuka last year. Now it's ‘Who else are we going to have?’
“Egbuka left. (Jeremiah Smith) doesn’t talk a lot, so we've got Carnell. He's been doing very good. I'm proud of him.”
Of course, OSU will count on Tate for more than just his leadership on the field this season. The 6-foot-3, 191-pound wideout could be in line for his greatest season as a Buckeye in 2025, especially considering most teams will have to bracket Jeremiah Smith weekly. Tate hopes to be next in line for Ohio State’s first-round receivers club next spring and build on a 2024 season where he caught 52 passes for 733 yards and four touchdowns.
But the strides he’s made as a leader are making a profound impression on all the wide receivers in Hartline’s room, especially the younger players.
“Yeah, I've seen a big difference,” sophomore wideout Mylan Graham said of Tate’s leadership. “I mean, he's kind of always been kind of a bigger leader, role model to me since I got here. But I've really seen the leap and the jump he's made since last year and how more vocal he is and just how more he's gotten to the younger guys.
“I'll just say this year, he's more comfortable speaking for the whole team. He's more comfortable just coaching up our younger guys and even some of our second-year guys, just coaching us up more. And I'll probably say just that he's more comfortable talking to us.”
