Bengals WR Ja'Marr Chase caught a solid six passes for 62 yards in Sunday's loss to the Patriots. He snagged all six of his targets, tying WR Andrei Iosivas for the team target lead amid a poor Cincinnati offensive performance. Chase's yardage more than doubled Iosivas' 26 receiving yards. No other Bengal exceeded 18 yards.
HC Zac Taylor, asked at what point he knew Chase would play: "I can't really answer that."
Did they limit his playing time? "He played a lot. We managed. We took him out on some stuff, just cuz the expectation of not praticing. But as the game went, he felt like he wanted to keep going."
Chase said his Saturday illness was food poisoning, so he likely saw no impact from that. He added that you'd need to "ask coaches" why he didn't see more than 6 targets, according to Mike Petraglia of CLNS Media.
The Patriots had second-year CB Christian Gonzalez shadowing Chase for the game, which might have factored in. Gonzalez was playing just his fifth pro game after going down in Week 4 of his rookie campaign. But he has impressed in limited duty so far.
Ultimately, it was encouraging that Chase played 40 of 48 offensive snaps and caught all his targets. We're likely to get better games from the Cincinnati offense going forward, and richer game plans for the team's No. 1 WR.
Week 2 holds a Chiefs matchup that could mean plenty of offense. Washington and Carolina sport non-intimidating defenses the following two weeks.
Let's take a look at the last 3 winning rosters in the FFPC's Divisional Round Playoff Challenge ... and see what we can learn about how to win this year.
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