Ja'Marr Chase — Week 1: Four Targets, Fourth on His Own Team
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 14
Chase was thrown to four times Sunday — fewer than Mike Gesicki's seven, Tee Higgins's six and Chase Brown's six — and caught two, for sixteen yards deep left in the second quarter and minus four on a short throw to open the third. His four targets came out at minus two point five expected points, and only one came after halftime, in a 33–27 win over the Buccaneers.
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Four targets. That is the number on Ja'Marr Chase's line from Cincinnati's opener, and it is fourth on his own team — behind seven to Mike Gesicki, six to Tee Higgins and six to Chase Brown, and tied with nobody. He caught two of the four for 12 yards, and the four throws his way came out at −2.5 expected points added, which is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position.
The one that landed cleanly was first and 10 at the Cincinnati 45, nine 10 left in the second quarter, Bengals up 14 to three: Joe Burrow deep left, 16 yards, pushed out of bounds at the Tampa Bay 39, a first down worth +0.9. That was the sixth play of the 12-play drive that ended in Chase Brown's touchdown. The other three: third and six at the Cincinnati 30 with seven 53 left in the first, incomplete short right, punt; second and six at the Tampa Bay 17 with four oh four left in the first, incomplete short left, though Burrow scrambled for the first down on the next snap and Gesicki scored three plays after that; and second and six at the Cincinnati 31 on the second snap of the third quarter, a short throw to the left that Chase caught six yards behind the line and carried to the 27 for −4. Higgins converted the third and 10 that followed with a 29-yarder.
Three of the four targets came before halftime, when Cincinnati threw 20 times counting sacks; one came after, when it threw 16. Burrow's 35 throws went to nine different receivers, and the touchdown through the air, the two long third-down conversions and the game-sealing 18-yarder all went to Gesicki or Higgins. Chase's longest catch was 16; Gesicki had a 25 and a 24, Higgins a 29.
Back in June the preview called Chase a WR4 on volume and 93 percent availability, both inputs that carry, and titled the whole thing the discount is a tendon. He was listed with a knee before the game and was on track to play, per the team's report on Bengals.com, and he played. Sunday put the availability half in the plus column and left the volume half with a four next to it, and a single game with four targets is exactly the sort of thing a season-long volume read is built to absorb. Cincinnati is at the Texans on Sunday the twentieth. The number to watch is the target share, because on Sunday it was 11 percent of the pass plays.
_Data via nflverse._
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