Fast Start
Chase wants no part of playing in the preseason “If it was up to me.” Before his record-breaking rookie year in 2021, when the Bengals started 3-1, he and the starters played just three snaps in August. Two runs and a badly mangled screen pass to him that went incomplete. He hasn’t taken a preseason snap since.
“You don’t feel ready mentally for a game like that. For me, I don’t think I do,” Chase said.
Although when he was reminded that no starters took any snaps at all during the ’22 and ’23 preseasons when they started 0-2, and then they took some in 2024 when they also started 0-2, he’s not too sure what is tied into a fast start and what isn’t.
But he knows that he and Higgins haven’t been here this early together playing catch with Joe Burrow in three years, and he thinks that may be what they need, and saluted management for getting his receivers extended.
“I don’t know how we start fast,” Chase said. “They paid me and Tee, hopefully that’s the starting fast move right there … Having everyone here again with the opportunity to work with Joe again, getting established with our offense helps us move around, learn more seeing a new defense every day, I think that’s pretty cool. That should get us better, getting back early and working.
“It shows that they care. Shows that they want to have the offense together. Keep this group together. They want us to excel from it. They see the potential that we all have and want to capitalize.”