← The Bill and Doug Show: Ohio State Football Talk
The Bill and Doug Show: Ohio State Football Talk
The Jeremiah Smith Heisman Trophy case, snagging a Toledo gem & the Bill Belichick disaster: Rants
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Ohio State coach Ryan Day on Tuesday mentioned the idea that receiver Jeremiah Smith might not get the stats necessary to build a Heisman Trophy case.
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Welcome back to the Bill and Doug Show. Three rants today on Tuesday. We have a lot more coming the rest of the week. We'll have our national picks on Friday. We'll have our Ohio State Illinois picks on Thursday. We'll have a big Wednesday Q A show for our premium subscribers on Substack. We'll have our playoff brackets later on Tuesday. But for here getting this out Tuesday afternoon, no Bill, just Doug. And I'm going to talk about at like a happy ramp about a quarterback that an a quarterback from the state of Ohio get mad about a coaching hire again. But I want to start with Jeremiah Smith, the Ohio State receiver, in a Heisman conversation because this is on the mind of Ryan Day and you can tell because he said something after Ohio State's win over Minnesota on Saturday night and he brought it up again on Tuesday at his news conference previewing Illinois. And the thing that he said on Tuesday that caught my ear was this. This is a pretty much a direct quote. Whether Jeremiah will get the stats that he would need to get into the Heisman race or not. It's sort of out of his hands because there are just certain things that can happen that are out of his control that doesn't change who he is in terms of a player or his impact on the game or anything like that. So we have to make sure we're getting using as many ways as we can to get him the ball, knowing that's not the number one most important thing. The most important thing is moving the ball, scoring points and being efficient. So that was Ryan Day specifically referencing Heisman Trophy stats. And that followed Saturday night when Carnell Tate had a huge night for Ohio State and for one night Jeremiah Smith was the sidekick and Ryan Day went out of his way to mention quote, I don't think it's even close that Jeremiah Smith is the best offensive player in college football, if it's close, I'd like to know who it is. When you're a receiver, it's different than when you're a quarterback. So on a night when Jeremiah Smith had a good night but was the second option to a huge Carnell Tate night, Ryan Day went out of his way to say Jeremiah Smith is the best offensive player in college football. And then he brought up the stats on, on Tuesday. And this is a reminder about, and it's not just another rant about Heisman voters not being the best. It's a reminder of how I think in the playoff era we all need to think differently about things. And, and I think we need to think differently about achievement during the year when you're just trying to be in the top 12. We need to think about longevity, we need to think about staying fresh. But I think in a statistical argument, and the Heisman remains to large part a statistical argument, I think we need to differentiate between the teams that are clearly locked in a playoff race and the teams that maybe are going to play 12 regular season games and then a bowl that guys might opt out of or not. And that there is there, that is their goal now they're trying to make the playoff. But you, there are some teams that, you know, aren't going to make the playoff. And I have advocated that. I think the Heisman should be awarded after the end of the entire season. In a situation where right now you're playing 12 regular season games, some of the best teams are playing conference championship games. So you're making a 13 game evaluation for the Heisman Trophy. But then there are teams who might play four more games. So you're having like a huge chunk of the season, another third of the season that's not factoring into the Heisman race. And then people say, well, all it's going to be is the best player on the team that wins the national championship is going to win the Heisman. And then I say, well, well, okay, are we actually mad about that? And if it's not that, if you want to evaluate Travis Hunter last year from Colorado, who had an amazing season on both sides of the ball just through the 12 games that he played. But then you're evaluating somebody else. You're trying to figure out the best player on Ohio State, Notre Dame makes the national championship game. Is it, is it Texas at a semifinal? Penn State a semifinal. Those players have more games, more stats, more meaningful moments to be evaluated, upon which I would say, oh, that's a reward for excellence. It's a reward for being on a great team. And I don't think combining the regular season and a playoff run in college football is the same as doing it in the NFL. I, I, this is too, it's too much, too much more. And I think the thing that really matters to this is that in pursuit, in the knowledge that you're gonna play more, you actually dial it back during the regular season. And if we lean on stats too much during the Heisman race, we're actually going to not eliminate the possibility, but perhaps reduce the relevance of the best players on the best teams who are saving themselves to some degree. So for Ryan Day, who is totally focused on an Ohio State repeat, to even bring up the idea, will Jeremiah Smith have the stats? Makes me think we might have to reevaluate ourselves. So if you don't want to give the Heisman out after the end of the whole thing, and I've talked to people at the Heisman committee about this and gotten in Twitter fights with them about it, and one of the points they make is like, well, we have the banquet scheduled for the second week in December. And like, we had the room reserved or whatever it is. It's like, well, the banquet's scheduled. It's like, God forbid, the most important sports award in North America, perhaps make it more difficult to schedule a banquet. Sorry, sorry. I didn't know the banquet circuit was the most important part of college football. So if you don't want to move the banquet, we have the chicken, the chickens ordered. We talked to the caning company, the catering company. You can't just call the catering company and say, we're not doing it till the end of January. I mean, what's the catering company going to do except maybe cook the chicken six weeks later? So if you don't want to do that, then I think we need to encourage ourselves to get away. Not from any statistical discussion as it relates to the Heisman, but I think we just have to get smarter about it. Raw stats still matter. They have to matter less. Like, per game stats are still matter. But, like, we have to understand what teams are trying to do, because the thing about this is that Ryan Day brings it up. Jeremiah Smith right now is 13th in the nation in receiving yards per game at 92.6. Good. He's eighth among power conference receivers in receiving yards per game. He's fifth among power conference receivers who are playing for ranked teams, those teams that might be in the mix for something compared to last year. He is far ahead of his pace. Five games into last year as a true Freshman, he had 23 catches on 29 targets. This year, he has 35 catches on 44 targets for 463 yards in the first five games. Again, just for instance, it's context here, right? He's still pretty, pretty up there in the Heisman odds, and they change all the time. We don't have to get bogged down in odds. But I just, like, see straw polls and like, it's not, you know, people who are saying, here's who I would vote for the Heisman, whatever. I, I'm not saying. I'm not saying that I would vote Jeremiah Smith first in the Heisman race right now. But it's more about process. It's more about how you think about things. And we can't get bogged down statistically. Malachi Tony from, from Miami, true freshman, having a great year, getting a lot of attention for it. He has 29 catches on 36 targets for 375 yards. So he has like, 85 fewer yards than Jeremiah Smith. He has eight fewer targets and he has six fewer receptions. Okay, okay. So we're just. But like, we've already seen Jeremiah Smith, so we're not quite as quite as jacked up about it. And it's like, it's a credit to Malachi Tony. There's an unselfishness. Ryan Dave referenced it. And there's also the reality of Ohio State playing slow. Ohio State this year is averaging 595 plays per game offensively. That is 132nd out of 136 teams in FBS. They are, they are the number one team in the country and they are the fifth slowest team in the country in terms of number of plays. This is a statistical detriment to everybody associated with Ohio state. They're averaging 559.5 plays per game. Missouri leads the country. Missouri is averaging 83, 85.3 plays per game. That's 25 more plays per game. Think about what that means statistically. But Ohio, Ohio State can't speed up just to get Jeremiah Smith more stats. And then also it's the idea that if defenses are going to try to wait, try to take away deep chapters, they're going to try to take away Jeremiah Smith. You lose some of the statistical argument, as Day said, continued on Tuesday. Someone can say, hey, we're going to put four guys on Jeremiah and he has to go out there and play and you have to figure out how you want to make these adjustments and then open things up. For Jeremiah. But like the idea of, hey, you can put four guys on them, right? That's also a reality of this. So it's like pace of play, how defenses are playing them. And Ryan Day is talking about Jeremiah Smith just keeps playing over and over again. He has an unbelievable attitude, but it's a statistical thing. And so like, like it's, it's, it always bothered me a little bit. And back in the day, you know, when like Houston quarterbacks were winning the Heisman and BYU quarterbacks were winning the Heisman, it's just because there was an introduction of a run and shoot, of a style of play that voters and college football fans and media weren't adjusted to yet. And so it's like, I don't know who's the best player in college football. It's Andre Ware. And it's like, was Andre Ware ever the best player in college football? No offense to Andre Ware, but like, we have to be past that. And I think pace of play for teams who are trying to get somewhere at the end of the year and play another third of their schedule should factor into this. So I don't know that we're going to succeed in trying to move the Heisman. So I guess all we can do is try to make the discussion a little more intelligent. And Ryan Day is trying to get out in front of this. He's trying to say, I don't know if he's going to have the stats. He's trying to say he's the best offensive player in college football. So I think we have to do it together. I'm not saying that Jeremiah Smith has to win the Heisman. I'm saying he is having a good statistical year as the best player on the best team and he's kind of across the board acknowledged as the best player in college football. But so far it's not enough. And I guess we should be asking ourselves, like, what else do we want in a team sport with loftier pursuits? So the other thing is that, that I have to stop doing and I would encourage you to stop doing is Devonte Smith's 2020 at Alabama the last receiver to win the Heisman? The last pure receiver, Travis Hunter, obviously, last year, partial receiver, partial cornerback. And that, you know, he won it. He won it because he's amazing and because he deserved to win it. But he won it because he's a two way player. So it's a different conversation than a singular receiver. So devonte Smith's the last pure receiver to win it. Before that, Desmond Howard before that, Tim Brown, Devonte Smith in the KOBE Year in 2020, in 11 games, had 105 catches for 1641 yards and two touch and 20 touchdowns. That's in the 11 games up to the Heisman, 105 catches, 1641, 20 touchdowns. So it's. It's so. And, and Bama didn't play super fast that year. Bama. I was like, oh, maybe Bama would just like love the nation and pace. They didn't. I don't even understand it now. Like, seeing the comparison now, I don't know how he did it other than Jalen Waddle got hurt. And that year, John Mechi for Alabama was their second leading receiver at the time the Heisman was handed out. Devonte Smith, 105 catches. John Mechi 44. Devonte Smith, 1641 yards. John Mechi 782. Devonte Smith, 20 touchdown receptions. John Mechi 6. 6. So, like, that's not the case with Ohio State either, because Carnell Tate is much more of a factor here. Jeremiah Smith, 35 catches so far. Carnell Tate 24. Jeremiah Smith, 463 receiving yards. Carnell Tate, 435. Jeremiah Smith, 6 touchdown catches. Carnell Tate, 4. So it's hard when your teammates are good. You want to be part of a great team, but you don't want to be part of too many great teammates who take away from. They don't take away from your individual excellence, but the context makes your individual excellence, statistically or otherwise, maybe not stand out so much. So I'm ranting. I'm not claiming to have a solution that's. I think this isn't called solutions. These are my Tuesday rants now. Right? It's kind of what I've landed on here for my Tuesday podcast video. So I, I just want to bring it up as we all continue to think about this, as we think about Reuben Bane at Miami as a, as a defensive lineman, as a Heisman candidate, as we go through all the quarterbacks in college football who are of course going to be Heisman candidates. This is like the second most prolific position in college football in this era, besides quarterback. But yet I don't think we have a handle on it. When the best guy who's having a good statistical year for the best team, it feels like it's not enough. I think we don't have a handle on it and we need to be better. That's my rant.
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Rant number two Last week I campaign I complained that the north let Trinidad Chambliss, a Division 2 quarterback from Ferris State in the state of Michigan, a Michigan native. They let him get south and he went to Ole Miss and he's played excellent football for Old Miss this year. And how can that happen? So I want to shout out when the north keeps a guy North. Mason Heintschel, true freshman quarterback at Pitt, 18 year old, took over last week as a true freshman. He's from Toledo Clay High School in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio. In his first start turning to a true freshman, he was 30 of 41 for 323 yards and four touchdowns and a 487 win over Boston College. This is a guy whose offer list was mostly Mac teams and then Coastal Carolina and Liberty before Pitt jumped in on the end of this guy. And on signing day, Cade Bell, the PIT offensive coordinator, talked about Mason Heintrael. It's one of those things like you get excited on signing days. This is months ago and it's like okay, whatever he's saying this stuff but like are we sure this is actually true? He said of recruiting Mason Heintschel from the suburbs of Toledo. We watch every single kid as a whole offensive staff. We want to make sure we all see the same things. We went through all the quarterbacks in the country. Three stars, four stars, five stars. And when we put our ratings together, Mason was the highest rated Guy on our board. Sometimes when you see a kid that didn't really have, have Power 5 offers, it's like, man, are we right? So Cade Bell went on to say that like the way things, he was a three year starter at Clay High School in Toledo. A lot of success, but maybe like not the best offensive line, right? So he is making a lot of plays out of structure. And Cade Bell was saying like that's what we loved about him. He's a playmaker. That's the thing that jumped out on the film for Mason Heitchel. But Pat Narduzzi wanted to see him in the pocket so they had to do a cut up. Cade Bell said he went through every single game that Mason Heintschel played. And they, they brought Pat Narduzzi a cut up of him throwing from the pocket because that's what Pat Narduzzi wanted to see. And then Pat Nor Dozy saw that and he realized real fast that we had a steal. So that's what they thought. And then they had Eli Holstein, the Alabama transfer who started all of last year for them. A great start to the season in 2024 tailed off at Pitt, was 6, 0, finished 6 and 7. They had a guy named Cole Gonzalez that they brought in from Western Carolina. Cade Bell had been the offensive coordinator at Western Carolina before Pitt hired him. He's in year two there now. So they brought in Cole Gonzalez, like, hey, this guy knows Cade Bell system. But they decided Pat or Duzi decided to bench Eli Holstein. But they didn't go to the guy who knows the system, who's a senior. They went to an 18 year old true freshman and he played so well that his team scored 48 and he was named the ACC freshman of the week. He was in the national freshman of the week and it's because Pitt found what they believe to be a steal in Toledo. So my rant is awesome. Great job by Pitt. Maybe there's some teams in the Big Ten who should have found Mason heel who should have been on that they weren't. But at least this is not a kid from Toledo, Ohio who's down doing it for Coastal Carolina or Liberty. So now will it continue? If it does continue, will Pip be able to keep him around? This is like, this is what you invest in. So there's no guarantees. We've seen guys over the years, you have one great week. I mean Eli Holstein was doing this early last season, right? But you watch Mason Heinzel that hit like one really nice throw down the field. It's a lot of intermediate and short stuff, but good pocket presence. Big guy who'll stand in the pocket, scrambled, scrambled to run, scrambled to keep plays alive and throw will rip it in the middle of the field. This wasn't all dinks and dunks in watching what he did against Boston College so you can see what's there. And the thing that you like about this is that they feel like they saw it on film and now they already have proof of concept as a true freshman. So congratulations to Pitt. Congratulations to Mason Heinshell from Toledo, Ohio.
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The last thing I want to rant about is man Bill Belichick. What I can't man. So listen, like the hubris at North Carolina. They're 2 and 3. They got destroyed by Clemson last week. Embarrassed and the nepotism. Two of Bill Belichick's sons are on staff. Steve Belichick, who was the defensive coordinator at Washington last year, had been on his staff in New England. His other son, one of his other sons, Brian, is on the staff as well. And then I didn't know this and it's only because of the story from W R L television station in North Carolina that had a very interesting story this week talking to a lot of sources around the program about what's going on with Bill Belichick. I did not know that that Michael Lombardi, who's Belichick's right hand man is, is the general manager is you know the guy putting together the roster at North Carolina. A lot of the hubris comes from him. He used to work in New England. He used to work for the Browns. His son Matt is the team's quarterbacks coach which I did not know. He Matt Lombardi was an offensive analyst at Oregon last year. Prior to that he was an assistant receivers coach with the Vegas Raiders and an assistant quarterbacks coach for the Carolina Panthers. He's now the quarterbacks coach for Bill Belichick and they got Geo Lopez from South Alabama and everybody was super excited and like here they are, they're two and three and so I hope there I didn't like the hire from the jump. I think this is desperation for North Carolina but I hope everybody can learn some lessons from this. This WRAL story I would direct direct you to it. Just google WRAL and and Belichick or whatever and you'll find it. Here's a quote from that story. It's an unstructured mess. A source with first hand knowledge of the program told wral. There's no culture, no organization. It's a complete disaster. By the formau ratings which we like which are again drive to drive rating systems that do take a little bit of last year into account but that dissipates as the year goes on. North Carolina right now is 95th in the country among 130x136 FBS schools. They're behind three Mac teams. That's where North Carolina Carolina is right now. As a reminder like this is not a completely destitute program. North Carolina in 12 of the previous 17 years had a winning record. They made a bowl last year they were 6 and 6 under Mack Brown and lost their bowl game. Last year they lost 20. The the biggest margin of of that they lost by last year at North Carolina was 20 points. They lost that in two games. They had three other games they lost by one score. So the most they lost by was 22 and three. So far this year for North Carolina their losses are by 34, 25 and 28. So and they lost 3810 to Clemson last year. Last week they were trilling 35 to 3 at the half so they could have lost by 70. And Clemson took it easy on him in the second half so it's 353 at the half. It's only 38 to a 10. Final score. North Carolina is off this week but I just on this idle week I don't want you to Forget what a disaster Bill Belichick is as a college football head coach. An absolute unmitigated disaster. It's an embarrassment to the school. It's an embarrassment to him. It's, it's tarnished. I don't know that it's tarnishing his NFL legacy. It's mostly an embarrassment to the school because Bill Belichick is going to be fine. You're going to be able to go to Canton and rub his head or whatever. Right? But why North Carolina did this? Please learn lessons from this. You look at something like what North Carolina did for this season and something like what Indiana did for last season, hiring a winning coach who was on his way up, who was still hungry, and Kurt Signetti, as opposed to hiring a coach who was at the absolute peak of his profession, who's disinterested and on the way down. Stop hiring. Disinterested on their way down. Formerly great coaches who are just trying to hang on. Your program is better than that. I said it in the off season and it's true again. Now, I hope this is one season and done, but especially when you're allowing a coach to bring in his friends and family, bring in family of his right hand man, it's embarrassing. Kirk Ference at least put in 20 years at Iowa before he hired his kid. Bill Belichick's like, yeah, I just showed up and here's my whole family. It's not a big, it's not going to the Outer Banks with the kids. It's a job. It's embarrassing. And North Carolina should know better. North Carolina is not the bottom of the barrel, most desperate program in college football. This is what the board of trustees and the administration, North Carolina, what they did to themselves. And now they're going to have to dig out of this. So again, you read this WRL story, there's conflict. There's like infighting in the team. It's like the transfers versus the established guys. There's preferential treatment. There's no results on the field. There's a lack of communication and it starts with an unbelievably terrible decision. So I'm just glad it didn't happen in the Big Ten. But I think everybody in the Big Ten would be smarter than this. What a fricking joke. All right, those are the Tuesday rants. Bill Landis will be back with me later in the day Tuesday on your YouTube feed, on your podcast feeds for our latest playoff brackets. Then we'll have a bunch of stuff the rest of this week. Ohio State, Illinois, noon on Saturday. Interesting. Interesting game. And then the other thing I would remind you of is, hey, do you need some gear? Roback.com you, you've probably heard me mention it by now. If you have heard me mention it and you haven't gone there, it's just a reminder. If you're new and it's like, oh, what's this he's talking about? It's just like cool college sports gear from their game day collection. R-O-B-A-K.com Go there. Quarter zips, hoodies. Like, I am ready for quarter zip season, man. Like, it's time for this. It's, it's. What is it? It's October 7th. It's time for this. So go check it out, Ohio State fans. Go check out roback.com. look at Ohio State gear there. I keep saying it has a chance. Like, it could be the best thing in your closet. Like the kind of like the, like the classy thing that you wear. Well, we know you have a lot of great gear. There's a lot of great options out there, but this is kind of like next level stuff. So we'll give you a break on the price at least. For your first order, put in this code. Bad 20B A D20@roback.com you'll get 20 off your first order. Bad 20@r h o b a c-k dot com. Thanks as always for you guys taking time out of your day to join us. We'll be back with more videos and podcasts soon. For now, I'm Doug and that was the Bill and Doug Show.