Chase Brown — Week 1: Twenty-Two Touches, Five Successful Runs
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 14
Brown carried sixteen times for fifty-six yards and the five-yard touchdown that made it 21–3, and caught five of six targets for twenty-two more — twenty-two touches, the most on either team. Only five of the sixteen carries gained what the down asked for, and the carries came out at minus one point one expected points, in a 33–27 win over the Buccaneers.
When Chase Brown's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
The full episode, in writing
Chase Brown's touchdown was the easiest play of his day. First and five at the Tampa Bay five, five 35 left in the second quarter, Bengals up 14 to three, up the middle, five yards, 21 to three. +1.3 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and it capped a 12-play drive from the Cincinnati 20 on which Brown had touched the ball three times: a nine-yard catch, a four-yard run on second and one for a first down, and the score.
Nothing else on the ground was easy. 16 carries, 56 yards, five of the 16 successful, and the carries came out at −1.1 expected points. Two went for 10 or more — 13 around right end on first and 10 from the Tampa Bay 44 with 12 55 left in the third, pushed out at the 31, and 11 up the middle from the 28 with eight 17 left in the fourth. Three went backward, two of them before the final drive: −1 around right end on the snap after the 13, and −4 around left end on second and two at the Tampa Bay 36, the first play of the fourth quarter, which set up a third and six that fell incomplete and a 58-yard field goal. On the final drive, with Cincinnati trying to run out a six-point lead, his three carries went no gain, −1 five, and it was Joe Burrow's sneak on third and one that closed the game.
The catches were the steadier half: six targets, five catches, 22 yards, longest nine, one of them on third down — third and five at the Tampa Bay 12 with six oh nine left in the fourth, three yards to the nine, short of the sticks, and a delay of game later McPherson kicked a 32-yarder. 22 touches is the most any player on either team had Sunday; Bucky Irving had 15 for Tampa Bay. Cincinnati ran 27 times — 16 for Brown, five for Burrow, five for Samaje Perine, one for Dohnte Meyers — and nine of Brown's 16 came after halftime, when the Bengals ran 16 times and threw 16.
Back in June the preview called Brown an RB8 whose case was a locked three-down role that held through quarterback instability, and it titled him boring is a compliment. Sunday was the role exactly as described — 16 carries, six targets, the goal-line touchdown, the clock-killing carries at the end — and the yardage was ordinary. The role is the bet, and one game of three and a half yards a carry does not touch it. Cincinnati is at the Texans on Sunday the twentieth. Watch the touch count; it held at 22.
_Data via nflverse._
When Chase Brown's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
Keep going