A new report paints the contract situation between the Cincinnati Bengals and Ja’Marr Chase in a pretty bad light.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Chase won’t partake in contract talks with the team during the season unless something changes.
And it gets worse:
According to sources, the star wide receiver believes the Bengals misled him when they told him at the end of last season, and again during the offseason, he would get an extension that ultimately did not happen.
The report goes on to note that the contract talks this summer featured numbers that would beat the annual average of $35 million that Justin Jefferson got from Minnesota, but that other structures and payout details were issues for Chase and his reps.
Now, there are a few catches here.
For one, the Bengals don’t talk extensions during the season, anyway. As Schefter goes on to point out, Andrew Whitworth in 2015 was the only exception in the last two decades.
Two, we already knew that the guaranteed money wasn’t to Chase’s liking, perhaps especially in the case of injury guarantees.
And three, the fact Chase took out a $50 million insurance policy on himself against injury for this season, per Schefter, simply adds further confirmation that this is merely the latest leverage play by a player and his camp in these circumstances.
As has been the case all along, Chase had handled things well, walking the tightrope between showing the team he’s serious about his market-resetting contract while not overly harming the team.
That won’t appease all fans, of course, especially after the offense’s flop in the Week 1 loss to New England. But he didn’t do a dramatic holdout during training camp, nor miss games that matter, which given the money at stake for a player of his caliber (especially after he watched the team break precedent for his quarterback last year), is notable.
And while this all seems very dramatic, it merely moves the extension to next summer which, for the most part, was the expected time for one anyway. There, the Bengals will likely pay up well over that $35 million and fix the guarantee structures to Chase’s liking.
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