Jeremiah Smith Heisman Odds Plunge to Pick’em After Record-Breaking Iowa Performance

Jeremiah Smith’s Heisman Trophy odds have collapsed toward pick’em territory after the Ohio State wide receiver torched No. 14 Iowa for 11 catches, 206 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-14 Buckeyes win on Saturday. The junior now sits at +110 on DraftKings, a stunning shift from +260 just a week earlier, while Kalshi’s prediction market has him winning the award outright roughly 47-49% of the time — more than four times the share of his nearest competitor.

Smith entered the season already regarded as the best receiver in college football, but his workload and production over the last two weeks have pushed him into territory few pass-catchers ever reach in the Heisman conversation. He followed a 12-catch, 217-yard, four-touchdown explosion against Illinois with Saturday’s performance at Kinnick Stadium against an Iowa defense that had been allowing just 8.0 points per game, the stingiest mark in the country entering the matchup.

A Receiver Rewriting the Ohio State Record Book

Smith’s second touchdown of the day, a 57-yard strike from quarterback Julian Sayin, gave him 36 career receiving touchdowns and moved him past Chris Olave for the outright Ohio State program record. Minutes later, his 10th catch of the game made him the Buckeyes’ all-time leader in career receptions as well, surpassing Emeka Egbuka. Smith already held the program’s career receiving yards record, meaning he now owns all three major career receiving marks in Ohio State history — in just 34 games played, compared to the 47 and 49 games it took Olave and Egbuka, respectively, to set their marks.

Smith leads the nation in receiving yards through five games and has posted back-to-back 200-yard outings against Illinois and Iowa. After the touchdown that broke the Buckeyes’ career scoring record, Smith struck the Heisman pose in the end zone — a moment that drew national attention when NBA superstar LeBron James posted “THROW IT TO 4! #HEISMAN” on X during the broadcast. Ohio State improved to 5-1 and will host Maryland in Week 6.

What the Odds Movement Signals for the Heisman Race

The betting market’s reaction has been swift and lopsided. Smith opened the week as a modest favorite over Miami quarterback Darian Mensah, but his performance against a ranked, defensively elite Iowa team erased any remaining doubt among oddsmakers. At +110, sportsbooks are pricing Smith at essentially a coin-flip to win the award, a remarkable number this early in October given how rarely wide receivers crack the top of Heisman markets at all — only one pure pass-catcher, DeVonta Smith in 2020, has won the trophy in the modern era.

Prediction markets tell a similarly dramatic story. Kalshi had Smith in the mid-30s percentage range entering the Iowa game; by the final whistle, his implied probability had jumped to the high-40s, more than four times the share now attached to Mensah, who saw his own number slide after a less dominant showing against Clemson. That kind of gap this early in a season suggests the betting market views the race as increasingly top-heavy, with Smith’s workload, program-record production and the eye test combining to make him the rare non-quarterback the market is willing to install as a near-lock favorite. Whether that holds will depend heavily on how Ohio State’s remaining schedule — starting with Maryland — continues to feed him volume, and whether any quarterback out of the SEC or Big 12 mounts a late push the way Heisman races often shift in November.