Report: Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase Won’t Negotiate During the Season, Even Though It Never Was a Real Option

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase will not negotiate a long-term extension during the season, according to a report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

When Chase broke his media standoff on Sept. 6, he said that was his deadline to get a new deal done.

The team’s deadline, almost as a rule, has always been the start of the regular season.

So Chase saying he isn’t going to negotiate with the Bengals in-season is like a guy on a bar stool telling the bartender he isn’t going to accept any more beers after the last call.

Bengals Negotiations With Ja’Marr Chase To Resume in 2025

Per Schefter’s sources, Chase feels misled by the team, which he said came to him at the end of the season and again before the start of training camp, informing the Pro Bowl wide receiver that he was going to get an extension.

Offers were made, and increased, according to Chase, but the two sides never agreed.

When Chase spoke to reporters for the first time since the end of 2023, it was the Friday before the season-opening loss to the New England Patriots.

Before taking any questions, he made it a point to say he never asked for an extension and that the Bengals approached him about it.

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— Dallas Robinson (@DallasDRobinson) September 10, 2024

Chase, who has two seasons remaining, didn’t say whether he would have asked for one had the Bengals not made the first move toward an extension. But the fact that he sat out all of training camp as a contract hold-in suggests it was his plan all along.

Believing the Bengals didn’t negotiate in good faith would be one thing, but to suggest they reneged on a promise to give him an extension is a stretch when offers were made.

Bengals owner and president Mike Brown said at the pre-camp luncheon that quarterback Joe Burrow, who received a five-year, $275 million extension last September with two seasons remaining on his rookie deal, and Chase are the team’s two most important players.

Asked if the Bengals’ contract offer reflected that statement, Chase said, “Now it does.”

He also said the sides were close, which further disproves the notion that the Bengals went back on a promise.

Chase said he would play without a new deal, and he has. He was on the field for 40 of 48 snaps in the season opener despite coming down with what he said was food poisoning the day before the game.

The Cincinnati front office typically does not negotiate with key players once the regular season starts.

In 2019, the Bengals gave starting center Trey Hopkins a three-year, $20.4 million extension the day before the final regular season game.

The only other time they have paid a player who starts on offense or defense in-season was 2015, when they gave left tackle Andrew Whitworth a one-year, $9 million extension a few days before the third game of the season.

That came after Whitworth – or his wife while using his phone, depending on which version of the story you believe – publicly criticized the team on social media after the Bengals made a low-ball offer heading into his age-33 season and drafted offensive tackles Cedric Ogbuehi and Jake Fisher in the first and second round, respectively, to be Whitworth’s replacement in 2016.

There have been several other in-season extensions involving special teams players.

Long snapper Clark Harris got a pair of one-year extensions in the days after the season opener in 2017 and 2018, and kicker Randy Bullock received a two-year, $4 extension after Week 2 in 2018.

The Bengals have not awarded any other in-season extensions since at least 2004.

Chase spoke with mixed messages on Sept. 6, first saying in response Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson’s record-breaking contract $140 million contract that he didn’t want to be his former LSU teammate’s deal by just a dollar, he wanted “to kick his ass.”

Later in the same conversation, Chase said he wasn’t trying to top Jefferson.

Schefter’s report did not include figures Chase was looking for in the negotiations, which are expected to resume after the 2024 season ends.

Chase said Thursday he feels much better than he did heading into Week 1 and suggested he will be playing the entire season despite the lack of a new contract with his comment that the Bengals are the team to beat in the AFC.