College football has never had much trouble finding its stars. Put up huge numbers at Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia or Oregon, and there’s a pretty good chance the national television shows will find you before you’ve even made it back to the locker room.
Do it at Oregon State, though, and apparently you might need to keep doing it for a while. Jesse Legree has been doing exactly that.
Five games into his college career, the Oregon State freshman has 28 catches for 741 yards and nine touchdowns, putting him second in the country in receiving yards and tied for the national lead in receiving touchdowns. The only player ahead of him in yardage is Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, who might be the most famous receiver in college football.
Smith deserves every bit of attention he gets. He’s spectacular, and after another monster performance Saturday against Iowa, he’s up to 823 yards and nine touchdowns himself.
But here’s where I have a problem. If Smith is going to be discussed as one of the best players in college football, Legree probably deserves to be somewhere in that conversation, too.
The difference between Smith and Legree right now is 82 receiving yards. The difference in national attention feels considerably larger than 82 yards.
Legree added another ridiculous afternoon Saturday as Oregon State hammered Colorado State 56-26 in its Pac-12 opener. He caught five passes for 156 yards and three touchdowns, averaging more than 31 yards every time he caught the ball.
His touchdowns covered 50, 28 and 52 yards. Apparently merely catching touchdowns isn’t interesting enough for him.
That performance also continued what has become one of the stranger statistical streaks in college football. Legree has now played five college games, and he has gone over 100 receiving yards in every single one of them.
He had 136 against Houston, 240 against Texas Tech, 100 against Montana, 109 against UTEP and 156 against Colorado State. That isn’t just a nice freshman record.
Five consecutive 100-yard receiving games puts Legree alongside Mike Hass and Brandin Cooks for the longest such streak in Oregon State history. Hass won the Biletnikoff Award. Cooks won the Biletnikoff Award.
That’s the neighborhood Legree has wandered into five Saturdays into his career.
And this isn’t a case of someone piling up numbers against a September schedule filled with teams you’ve never heard of. Legree began his career on the road against then-No. 23 Houston and caught five passes for 136 yards and a touchdown.
One week later, against then-No. 13 Texas Tech, he exploded for eight catches, 240 yards and two touchdowns. His 240 receiving yards were the second-most in a game in Oregon State history, behind only Hass’ 293-yard performance at Boise State in 2004.
Oregon State lost both of those games, and that’s probably part of why Legree’s start didn’t immediately become a bigger national story. The Beavers began 0-2, they’re playing in a completely rebuilt Pac-12, and Oregon State simply doesn’t receive the automatic national attention that follows the biggest brands in the sport.
That’s understandable. It also shouldn’t matter anymore.
What makes Legree’s story even better is that almost nobody saw this coming. He played defensive back before moving to receiver during his senior year at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, and while he had opportunities as a defensive back, he didn’t have a scholarship offer to play receiver when signing day arrived.
Oregon State and JaMarcus Shephard gave him that opportunity. Less than a year later, Legree is chasing Jeremiah Smith on the national receiving leaderboard.
If you wanted another reminder that recruiting rankings don’t always know nearly as much as we pretend they do, there you go.
Shephard deserves plenty of credit for identifying Legree, but what has impressed me most is that this doesn’t look fluky anymore. Maybe after Houston you could call it a great debut. After Texas Tech, you could call it a breakout.
After Montana and UTEP, you could start wondering whether Oregon State had stumbled onto something special. After Colorado State, we’re past wondering.
Legree isn’t surviving on one route or one gigantic play per game. He’s consistently getting behind defenses, making contested catches and turning opportunities into huge gains.
There’s also something encouraging here for Oregon State beyond the numbers. The Beavers suddenly have a player opposing defenses have to plan around every week, and when you’re trying to rebuild a program’s national relevance, players like Legree speed up the process considerably.
Braden Atkinson has developed into one of the nation’s most productive quarterbacks, and his connection with Legree has helped turn Oregon State’s passing game into something defenses can’t simply shrug off.
The Beavers are now 3-2 after three straight wins. They’re not suddenly a College Football Playoff contender because they beat Colorado State, and there are plenty of questions left to answer over the rest of the Pac-12 schedule.
But Jesse Legree isn’t one of those questions anymore. He’s one of the best receivers in college football.
Not one of the best freshman receivers. Not one of the best receivers outside the Power Four. Not one of the best stories nobody expected in September.
One of the best receivers in college football.
Jeremiah Smith has 823 receiving yards. Jesse Legree has 741. They both have nine touchdown catches, and Legree has topped 100 yards every single time he’s stepped onto a college football field.
That’s close enough that the conversation should be closer, too. College football may have been slow to find Jesse Legree, but after five weeks, there’s really no excuse for missing him anymore.
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