Chase Brown Camp Update — August 31: The Backfield Cut to Three Around Him
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Cincinnati kept three running backs on the initial fifty-three: Chase Brown, Samaje Perine and Tahj Brooks. The beat's read is that the team will lean on Brown with thin depth behind him. He sat the preseason finale with the rest of the starters.
When Chase Brown's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
The full read
Cut day gave Chase Brown's backfield its shape: three running backs on the initial 53 — Brown, Samaje Perine and Tahj Brooks — per Geoff Hobson at the team's site. Three others were waived out of the room on Sunday — Kentrel Bullock, Jamal Haynes and Kendall Milton, per the team's announcement — and veteran Gary Brightwell's contract was terminated. Russell Heltman at Bengals On SI framed the result around the lead back in a piece Monday: the team will lean on Brown, in his words, with thin depth behind him — his characterization, not a team statement — and the same piece floated waived backs Michael Carter and Frank Gore Jr. as depth options Cincinnati could add, a writer's list rather than a reported team plan. Bullock and Milton were reported back on the practice squad, per Charlie Clifford via Heltman's tracker.
Brown himself did not play Friday's finale — the starters rested in a 30 to 13 win at Philadelphia, per the team's site — so the last backfield reps of the summer went to Bullock, 14 carries for 85 yards and a touchdown, and Haynes, seven for 78 with a 39-yard score, per Jay Morrison at Bengals On SI. Both were waived two days later, which is cut day working as it usually does: August production in a reserves game is an audition tape, not a roster claim.
Both of the questions we set out a week ago are now answered. Brown didn't play in the finale, and the room behind him is Brooks and Perine — Milton lost that competition. The one piece the reporting doesn't settle is the one the room's shape was supposed to reveal: how the passing-down work gets shared. No snap-share or third-down-role reporting exists in the window; Perine's résumé is circumstantial evidence, not an answer. For a first-time listener, the June case was that Brown owns a locked three-down role — 232 carries and 69 catches last season — and this week strengthened it: three backs kept, and the beat writing that the team leans on the one at the front. We'll pick the thread back up once real games start answering the workload question.
_Data via nflverse._
When Chase Brown's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
Keep going