Choose your fighter: Jahdae Barron or Jeremiah Smith?

The 2025 Cotton Bowl is going to feature what might be the best duel of the college football season. Jahdae Barron, the nations best defensive back, as determined by the Thorpe Award, will face off against true freshman phenom wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. This could very well be the battle that determines the outcome of the game.

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Jeremiah Smith – Freshman – 6′ 3″ 215lbs

Jeremiah Smith, a semi-finalist for the Biletnikoff Award, has had a fantastic rookie season at Ohio State. He has garnered 95 targets, catching 70 of them for 1,220 yard and 14 TDs. To put it in terms of Texas Football history, he would currently sit third in the record books in receiving yardage, sixth in 100-yard games in a single season, and would sit firmly above the rest at first in the TD department. The young man is GOOD.

He is so good that he is doing something none of the other four first-round WR selections from Ohio State have done. Despite their first-round endings, Chris Olave, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Marvin Harrison had humble beginnings. As a true freshman, Olave caught 12 passes on 16 targets, Smith-Njigba caught 10 passes on 13 targets, and Harrison Jr. caught 11 passes on 16 targets. At Ohio State, targets are hard to come by when there are five-star WRs everywhere you look.

Early production is one of the things that made Garrett Wilson catching 30 passes on 42 targets so special, and Jeremiah Smith has dwarfed that. And not for lack of talent of competition for targets alongside him, either. Emeka Egbuka, Brandon Inniss, and Carnell Tate all own a five-star rating from one of the four major services. What Smith is doing at 19-years-old is special.

Now get ready to get hit with a huge dose of “damn I’m old as hell.” Jeremiah Smith was only 1.5 months old when Texas won its last national championship. Literally a baby. Compare that to Jahdae Barron who was four years old at the time and who may have some vague memories of the game.

Jahdae Barron – Senior – 5′ 11″ 200lbs

Barron hoped to be in the NFL by now but nobody can question the intelligence of his decision to return to college for a final year. A year ago he was a mid- to late-round pick. Now he’s being mocked in the first-round.

The experience Barron has accumulated may be the winning difference in this battle, and is likely a massive part of his 2024 success, though Barron himself would probably deflect ownership of the season to the play of Michael Taaffe and Andrew Mukuba Sr..

The former nickel has provided Texas with what PFF grades as the best cover corner in all of College Football (FBS+FCS). He has yet to allow a single team over 43 yards when targeting him, and in that one game (Kentucky), he was targeted only twice. On one play he proved he was human making a coverage mistake versus Barion Brown allowing 43 yards.

Jahdae is a dangerous corner for receivers to play against. He is far from soft or a diva. His time moving around the secondary has taught him physicality that’s evident in his play. At the same time, he rarely picks up penalties with only two on the year. One of those was a defensive pass-interference (ASU) that is debatable whether the ball was catchable or not.

Something to consider when thinking about Barron if he shuts down Smith on Friday — that may be enough to move his universal draft projection into the first round. There is a lot of money sitting on the table on Friday that could bring out that extra 10% in Barron’s play.

Whatever way you want to dice it, both conclusions for the players are the same. They are damn good players at the top of their positions and there is about to be a major clash between the two.

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Will Jahdae Barron continue to shut down his receiver or will Jeremiah Smith add another massive day to his already impressive resume?