For the second straight year, Penn State won’t have an answer for an Ohio State receiver

In an ugly game dominated by defense last year in Columbus the Ohio State Buckeyes had one major trump card in their 20-12 win over Penn State, Marvin Harrison Jr. The son of a legendary wide receiver played up to his name with 11 catches for 162 yards and a touchdown against the Nittany Lions, but even with Harrison Jr. now playing professionally for the Arizona Cardinals, the Buckeyes still present a significant mismatch for the Penn State secondary. 

Harrison Jr. won the Biletnikoff Award as the best pass-catcher in college football in 2023, but remarkably, he’s been seamlessly replaced by 18-year-old true freshman Jeremiah Smith. The 6-foot-3 product of Miami Gardens, Florida leads the No. 4 team in the nation with 623 receiving yards on 35 catches with eight touchdowns, but it’s his veteran counterpart who is best positioned to dominate at Beaver Stadium as No. 3 Penn State hosts the Buckeyes on Saturday afternoon. 

Emeka Egbuka played in Harrison Jr.’s shadow last season, so instead of heading to the NFL after his junior season, where he likely would’ve been a first or second-round pick, the 6-foot-1 wide receiver returned to Columbus with unfinished business. Egbuka and other veteran teammates were desperate to end Ohio State’s three-game losing skid to Michigan, as were NIL donors with deep pockets, and now through the first seven games of his final collegiate season, Egbuka has a team-high 43 catches for 546 yards and six scores. 

Last season, 5-foot-11 cornerback Kalen King struggled as a junior at Penn State and was physically no match for the size and athleticism of Harrison Jr. And when he, Johnny Dixon, and Daequan Hardy all left to pursue careers in the NFL, head coach James Franklin dove head first into the cornerback market in the transfer portal and landed two SEC defensive backs, A.J. Harris from Georgia and Jalen Kimber from Florida. Moves that were necessitated, not just by three departures, but by the struggles of Cam Miller as CB1 against Ole Miss’s Tre Harris in the Peach Bowl. 

The 6-foot-1 Harris will likely draw the Jeremiah Smith assignment, and with what he’s shown as the primary shut-down cornerback for defensive coordinator Tom Allen’s unit this year, he should be up to the task. However, an early season injury to star safety Kevin Winston Jr. moved safety Jaylen Reed, who was playing primarily as the slot cornerback, back to deep safety, and elevated Miller and sophomore punt-returner Zion Tracy to play the slot. 

Emeka Egbuka is a mismatch for Cam Miller

Penn State junior cornerback Cam Miller leads the team in snaps from the slot, and will likely be the primary assignment for Ohio State’s Emeka Egubka who plays 80.4% of his snaps in the slot. Egbuka’s 438 receiving yards from the slot are the 16th most in the country and seventh-best among power conference receivers. His 3.20 yards per route run from the slot is sixth-best in the country and the best in the Big Ten. 

Egbuka is a big-time wide receiver who can create separation with his quickness and route-running, can make defenders miss once he gets the ball in his hands (7.0 yards after the catch per reception), and can win at the catch-point with physicality, something that has given Miller big problems throughout his career at Penn State.

In last season’s Peach Bowl, while drawing Ole Miss’s No. 1 receiver Tre Harris for much of the game, Miller allowed seven catches on 12 targets, and many of them were covered well until he lost at the catch-point. Egbuka has caught eight of 12 contest catch opportunities this season and 20 of 36 for his career at Ohio State. With a depleted left side of the offensive line after injuries to left tackles Josh Simmons and Zen Michalski, quarterback Will Howard could be under pressure quickly and often, making Egbuka, a receiver who can win early with quickness or late with physicality, the perfect security blanket and pressure-release valve. 

This season, picking on Miller has been a favorite pastime of most opposing quarterbacks. He has allowed the most receptions on the team in coverage with 17 for 183 yards and has the second-fewest snaps per reception allowed in coverage among power conference players with at least 100 coverage snaps, a sample size of 567 players. This means that when Miller’s on the field, he’s allowing a catch more frequently than all but one player in the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12, which needless to say is not good. 

With Egbuka out for Ohio State’s 2023 win over Penn State, the Buckeye’s ninth in 10 tries since James Franklin took over in 2014, Harrison Jr. accounted for 44% of Ohio State’s offensive yards and 57% of Kyle McCord’s passing yardage. Ryan Day and Ohio State’s coaching staff identified a mismatch and attacked it all game. Unless Penn State assigns Jaylen Reed to Egbuka in the slot, which would take the midseason All-American safety out of his most effective role, they’ll have another one in 2024 and with incredibly slim margins between these top 5 teams, that may be the difference. 

With Howard presenting a more mobile option at quarterback than McCord, QuinShon Judkins complementing TreVeyon Henderson in the backfield, and Jeremiah Smith having a legendary freshman season, Ohio State’s offense is loaded with playmakers, but for the second-straight year, it could be Penn State’s lack of answer for just one of them, that costs the Nittany Lions a shot at the Big Ten title.