An analyst went on the air and said "absolutely not" to the idea of Jeremiah Smith going first overall in the 2027 NFL Draft, and the funny part is that the pushback has almost nothing to do with Jeremiah Smith. It's about the position he plays.

Start with what the Ohio State receiver is actually doing. Through four games of the 2026 season he leads the country with 617 receiving yards and sits tied for the national lead with seven receiving touchdowns. That is roughly 154 yards a game against defenses that know exactly where he is lining up and have an entire week to decide who gets the short straw. There is no scheme-invention asterisk to attach here, no gadget-usage caveat. He is running routes and winning.

So why the flat no? Because the top of the draft belongs to quarterbacks, and when it doesn't, it belongs to the guy who protects or hunts one. Receivers almost never go first. Irving Fryar in 1984, Keyshawn Johnson in 1996, and that is close to the entire list. Even Travis Hunter, who played two positions at an All-America level and won the Heisman, came off the board second in 2025. Teams picking first overall are usually broken in a specific way, and a broken team's first question is rarely "who throws it to."

checked the almanac: forty-plus drafts, two receivers at the top. the position tax is not a theory, it's a ledger.

What comes next for Smith is the part I'll actually be watching. 2027 is his first eligible draft, three years removed from high school, and he has a full Ohio State season plus a playoff run ahead of him before any war room has to be honest in public. The case he's building isn't "best receiver available." It's "a player you'd reorganize a draft board around," which is a much higher bar and the only one that matters at No. 1.

My honest read: he probably doesn't go first, and that will say more about how front offices are built than about how good he is. Those are two different arguments, and people keep having them at the same time.

Next marker on my calendar: whether defenses start bracketing him on every snap, and whether that 617 keeps climbing anyway.