Ohio State has two of college football’s 10 freakiest athletes.
Jeremiah Smith earned the No. 1 spot on this year’s edition of Bruce Feldman’s “Freaks” list, the veteran college football reporter’s annual look at the sport’s top athletes. Sonny Styles is ranked 10th on this year’s list of Freaks.
Feldman chose Smith as the sport’s best athlete this season after the sophomore wide receiver followed up his spectacular freshman season by earning Iron Buckeye honors for both winter and summer workouts at Ohio State. Feldman’s article shines more light into why Smith earned Iron Buckeye honors twice this offseason, as Smith – who is “bigger and stronger and faster than he was last year,” according to Ryan Day at Big Ten Media Day – posted spectacular workout numbers this offseason.
Part of an unprecedented run in Columbus of elite wide receivers, the 6-foot-3 1/2, 223-pounder is clearly the most gifted. He’s the biggest, strongest and fastest. Smith’s testing and timing numbers are remarkable.
Asked which of his Freakish feats this summer he’s most proud of, Smith said it’s his 225 pounds on the bench for 20 reps. “I’m very proud of that,” he said. “I could probably only hit like five before I got to Ohio State. I came in weak.”
Smith’s 11-foot broad jump, 38-inch vertical jump and 23.5 mph on the GPS are jaw-dropping for a receiver his size. Could he get up to 24 mph?
“Whooo. I don’t think so,” he said. “That’s like track speed right there.”
Smith, who also squatted 550 pounds, credits the work he’s been doing with South Florida-based trainer Pearson Sutton since he was 8 for his explosiveness. “The way my trainer and my dad prepared me, working me out two, three times a day just made me bigger, faster and stronger.”
Styles joins Smith in the top 10 of the Freaks list after also earning Iron Buckeye honors twice this offseason. The 6-foot-5, 243-pound linebacker broad jumped 11 feet, vertically jumped 40 feet and squatted 675 pounds this offseason.
The senior linebacker didn’t disagree with Smith being ranked as college football’s freakiest athlete, but said he and Smith compete with each other during workouts to try to be the team’s top performer.
“He’s a little faster,” Styles told Feldman of Smith. “My (top speed on the GPS) last year was like 23.2. My most recent one was 22.8. He’s rolling. We’re super competitive with each other. We’ll do bike sprints against each other. We’ll push sleds. We have a bunch of great athletes always pushing each other.”
Smith and Styles were the only two Buckeyes to make this year’s Freaks list, but Styles told Feldman that walk-on cornerback Brenton “Inky” Jones was another Ohio State player who belonged on the list.
“He runs like 23.5, jumps 11-feet broad. Vert’s almost 40. He is a Freak,” Styles said of Jones.
