‘We’ve Got To Be Creative’ – Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase Made It Look Easy Sunday, But It Hardly Was

One day after Ja’Marr Chase dressed up as the Easy Button and scored three touchdowns while setting a Cincinnati Bengals record with 15 catches, head coach Zac Taylor detailed how difficult it actually was for his Pro Bowl wide receiver to have that kind of game in the 34-20 win against the Cardinals.

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How Ja’Marr Chase Dominated the Cardinals

The Bengals already ask all of their receivers to know the responsibilities for every position, and Chase gets tested on his homework more than anyone else the way the team moves him around to try to scheme opportunities for him.

It started in earnest last year in the Divisional Round win against Buffalo, and it has spilled — flooded, really — into this season, leading to Sunday’s tsunami with Tee Higgins out due to a rib injury that could force him to miss more time.

MORE: Week 5 NFL Injuries Recap

Here is a breakdown of Chase’s 76 snaps against Arizona:

• Slot Left Inside WR: 6
• Slot Left Outside WR: 4
• Slot Right: 1
• Slot Right Inside WR: 3
• Slot Right Outside WR: 2
• Wide Left: 40
• Wide Right: 19
• Backfield: 1

“We’ve got to continue to be creative and find ways to get him the ball and allow him to be explosive, and it might not always be 58 yards down the field, launching the ball,” Taylor said. “It might just be getting him the ball on the move or get him in the backfield.”

That backfield rep Sunday was just the second time this season Chase has been lined up there at the time of the snap. It was the first play of the third quarter and no doubt had the Cardinals’ attention as Joe Burrow hit Tyler Boyd for a six-yard slant.

The next time Burrow threw the ball, after a six-yard run by Joe Mixon for a first down, it was one of those launches Taylor referenced. Chase was lined up outside of Boyd in the slot to the left and ran across the field to catch a 63-yard touchdown from Burrow.

THERE IT IS FOLKS#CINatAZ | 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/F6UefyyIlt

— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) October 8, 2023

“There’s never been any MA’s — missed assignments — from him,” Taylor said. “When he’s put in those positions, he nails it and knows how to do it, and that allows you to be a lot more flexible with how you use him and get him 15 catches in a game. Because he’s able to retain all of the information you’re throwing at him during the week.

“I mean, he’s got as much information he has to retain as any player other than quarterback over the course of the week in terms of ‘what position am I playing, where am I lined up, what is my route in this concept.’ He’s got to do a lot. He caught balls in every position in our offense yesterday.”

I think Ja'marr Chase won from every WR alignment possible yesterday… X, Z, #3 Trips, Bunches, Stacks, Minus Splits, etc

15-192yds, 3 TD. Whew.

Master class in moving your star around and force feeding him. Well done. pic.twitter.com/opLACBS5Bq

— Ben Fennell (@BenFennell_NFL) October 9, 2023

Per Pro Football Focus, 14 of Chase’s 15 receptions resulted in either a first down or a touchdown Sunday. That’s the most the site has ever recorded in a single game since 2006.

His 15 catches resulted in 192 yards and three touchdowns and put him among the elite of the elite in NFL history. The 192 yards were the third-highest of his career, and they came with 87 yards after the catch, which also was the third-highest of his career.

“He can accelerate so quickly it makes it tough for the angles of the guys trying to tackle him because he could be going 80 percent and then burst to 100 real quick, so your angles change,” Taylor said.

“That’s what allows him to gain a lot of extra yards. I’ve said this often: He’s like a running back in terms of his contact balance. So when you do hit him in the legs, that isn’t a good way to take him down because he usually can bounce off of that, and he keeps going.”

Chase’s 235 yards after catch this season are second only to Tyreek Hill’s 276. And his 30 first downs are tied with rookie Puka Nacua for the most in the league.

But a big reason for that is the fact that Chase isn’t the only one on the Cincinnati offense who understands every assignment.

“There’s also credit that goes to TB [Boyd] and Trenton [Irwin] and Andrei [Iosivas] blocking on the perimeter for him because there were many short-yardage situations on third down where we spit the ball out on some of those bubbles, and those guys got the play started by making sure they secured the line of scrimmage,” Taylor said.

“Ja’Marr used his legs and got the first downs, but there was a lot of really good blocking out there on the perimeter on some of the screens we threw him and some of the run alerts we threw him that allowed him to get some of those yards after the catch that he was able to get.”

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It’s only going to get harder to rely so heavily on Chase as defenses, many of them much better than Arizona, will be focused on taking him away.

But the Bengals have shown an ability to tap into Chase’s football intellect as much as his raw physical prowess to stress those defenses in any way possible.

“That’s part of our job as coaches just to make sure that you can’t fully take a guy away,” Taylor said.