Ja'Marr Chase

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• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Ja'Marr Chase Camp Update — August 23: Declined the Honor Over One Drop

  Ja'Marr Chase caught six passes in the joint practice against the Bears, two of them in the red-zone period, days after refusing player-of-the-day honors because of a single drop. He sat Saturday's game with the rest of the starters.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Ja'Marr Chase Camp Update — August 16: Twenty-Two Touchdowns Is the Stated Goal

  Ja'Marr Chase says his only goal this season is Randy Moss's single-season touchdown record — and on Thursday night, a healthy Joe Burrow's longest completion of the preseason opener went to Chase. Both halves of the June case just moved the right way.

• 2026 PreviewJun 13, 2026

  Ja'Marr Chase 2026 Season Preview — the discount is a tendon

  Chase's 2025 season rested on volume and availability — 16 games played and 15.7 half-PPR points per game, finishing as the WR4. Both of those inputs, opportunity sustained across a full season and consistent presence on the field, are exactly the kind that research shows carry between years, with his 92.9% availability rate from 2021–25 reinforcing that durability is a real pattern rather than a fluke.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Ja'Marr Chase caught 125 passes for 1412 yards last season — through a three-quarterback carousel, on a six-and-11 team — and his price dropped to third overall. The market is discounting the one receiver in football whose floor was just stress-tested by catastrophe. This is the Muffed 2026 preview, and it's the closest thing to a buy call we'll make in the first round.

  The season: Joe Burrow's toe gave out in Week 2, and Chase's profile didn't blink. A hundred 85 targets — a career high — caught at a 68 percent clip from Joe Flacco and Jake Browning, of all people. Fourth-most receiving yards in football. 15-seven a game, third-best among receivers, on a team going nowhere. The play that tells it: Week 5 against Detroit, third-and-14, down three scores, Browning at quarterback — 64-yard touchdown. Backup, garbage time, double-digit deficit: didn't matter. The target tree in Cincinnati has one trunk.

  The arc, because it explains the price: five seasons — 15-five, 16-six, 13-three, 20, 15-seven a game. The 20 was 20 24, with Burrow healthy: WR1 overall, 17 touchdowns. The dips line up with quarterback chaos, not with Chase. That's the whole story of his career: with Burrow, best-receiver-in-football production; without him, merely top-three volume.

  What repeats: everything he owns. Targets are the stickiest stat in the sport — point seven-nine year over year — and his hundred 85 is the most he's ever commanded. What doesn't repeat is what just hurt him: a 15 percent touchdown share, the lowest of his career, eight scores on that mountain of volume. Receivers in the low-touchdown quartile barely fade — and his own 20 24 showed what this exact volume converts to when the quarterback can throw: 17 touchdowns. The bear case has to argue the targets leave. 10 years of data say targets are the last thing to leave.

  The situation — and here's where we're honest about what the lean is built on: Burrow. Per the June reports he's been on the field at OTAs, healthy after the grade-three turf toe that ended his year in Week 2, and Cincinnati spent its offseason fixing the defense — trading for Dexter Lawrence — while keeping the offense intact. Two wrinkles from minicamp week, told straight: Chase skipped the voluntary sessions and showed up for the mandatory ones saying he's glad the offseason noise is over; and Tee Higgins is playing on the franchise tag and sat minicamp out. Neither moves the target math yet. We can't model a quarterback's toe. We can observe that the entire discount on this player is, functionally, that toe.

  The price: pick three, the first receiver. Verdict: LEAN, underpriced — lean, not a full call, because the load-bearing assumption is medical, and our rules don't let us cite confidence we don't have. But the structure of the bet is beautiful: you're paying for what he just did without his quarterback, and the rebound case — his own 20 24 — comes free. The counter, out loud: if the toe lingers, you've bought the carousel again — and the carousel version scored 15-seven, third among receivers. That's the downside. Read that sentence twice.

  September watch: Burrow's first three weeks — mobility, not box scores. And the touchdown count — if the red-zone connection reboots, WR1-overall is the path, and you got him at three. If he's one of your guys, Muffed builds this show for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Ja'Marr Chase 2025 Season in Review

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  Show notes & transcript

  Ja'Marr Chase finished 2025 as the number 4 wide receiver in total PPR scoring and the number 3 wide receiver in PPR per game among players with at least six games. The wild part? He did it while the Bengals went 6 and 11, missed the playoffs, and started Joe Flacco for more than half the year after Joe Burrow went down. Chase wasn't just Cincinnati's best receiver — he was Cincinnati's offense, full stop. 16 games, a target on every other dropback that mattered, and a stat line that held up through a quarterback carousel and a defense that finished 29th in points allowed expected points added. Whatever this team needed to score, it ran through Chase.

  Now let's dig into the numbers. The volume was absurd: 185 targets in 16 games, 125 catches, 1,412 yards, 8 touchdowns, and a 32 percent average target share. Stop on that — nearly a third of every Bengals pass attempt, all season, aimed at one guy. He converted that into 313.6 PPR points, 19.6 a game, with a receiver air conversion ratio of 1.03, meaning every air yard thrown his way turned into more than a yard of real production. And the consistency is where the per-game rank gets its teeth. Chase cleared 17 PPR points in 11 of 16 games and put up four games over 25, with his rough weeks coming almost entirely against elite secondaries or in blowouts where Cincinnati abandoned the script. This wasn't boom-or-bust — this was a high floor with a ceiling that showed up roughly every third week.

  The play that captures the season isn't a clean Burrow connection — it's the Week 5 score against Detroit. Fourth quarter, third and 14, Bengals down 28 to 10, Jake Browning at quarterback, ball at the Cincinnati 36. Browning drops back, throws deep left, and Chase hauls in a 64-yard touchdown — 42 in the air, 22 after the catch, on third and long, with the backup, down three scores. That's the entire season in one snap. It didn't matter who was throwing. It didn't matter what the score was. Chase was getting his. Eight touchdowns, four of them salvage jobs in losses, and a top-three per-game finish on a sub-.500 team. That's the portrait of a true number one.