• Ben Solak, ESPNDec 10, 2024, 08:35 AM ET
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      Ben Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.

Well, I will always remember Week 14 of the 2024 NFL season as that one time the Rams and Bills played a perfect game and then some other stuff also happened. Forty-plus points apiece with no turnovers for the first time in NFL history! Remember when passing was down early this season and folks were convinced it would never recover so long as two-high defenses continued? It turns out all we needed was Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen.

Every Tuesday, I’ll spin the previous week of NFL games forward, looking at what the biggest storylines mean and what comes next. We’ll take a first look at the consequences of “Monday Night Football,” break down a major trend or two and highlight some key individual players and plays. There will be film. There will be stats (a whole section of them). And there will be fun.

This week, we take a deep dive on the Eagles after they won their ninth game in a row. How good is that defense? Can the passing attack get going? Are they legitimate Super Bowl threats? We also take a skeptical look at whether the Rams can repeat their Week 14 performance and whether they are NFC contenders. Let’s jump in.

Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Are the Eagles legit?
Second Take: Can the Rams keep doing this?
Mailbag: Answering questions from … you
Next Ben Stats: Wild Week 14 stats
“Monday Night Football” spin

The Big Thing: Can the Eagles’ defense hold up their passing game?

Every week, this column will kick off with one wide look at a key game, player or trend from the previous slate of NFL action. What does it mean for the rest of the season?

The Eagles are serious Super Bowl contenders. And in a rather rare occurrence for this era of football, the reason doesn’t start with the offense. It starts with the defense.

Philadelphia’s defense is so good. OK, yes, the Eagles almost gave up a winning drive to Bryce Young‘s Panthers on Sunday. But they were pressuring him a ton, and Young just kept making superhero throws. But the Eagles’ defense won the game for them in the end, just as it has done several times in the past couple of months.

Go back to the win over the Commanders, in which Washington scored only 10 points before garbage time. Or the win against MVP-hopeful Lamar Jackson and the Ravens, who scored only 12 points in meaningful time and suffered one of the worst offensive performances of Jackson’s career. Even the Rams’ 20-point outing against the Eagles looks all the more impressive when you consider some of their recent offensive success — and look at that, still only 14 points allowed in meaningful time in that one, too.

Vic Fangio’s defense took a month or two to get off the ground, but the emergence of young players is a clear sign that the lightbulb has come on for this unit. Defensive tackle Jalen Carter is playing the sort of dominant ball that the Eagles hoped he would when they made him a top-10 selection in the 2023 draft. Not one but two rookie cornerbacks are playing lights out, as both Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean have succeeded on islands in critical roles for this defense. Philly’s defense, which was an unmitigated disaster last season, has completely recovered and ascended to among the league’s best.

At first brush, it looks like the offense might have done the same. How can you argue an offense featuring running back Saquon Barkley — who might break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing yardage record — is anything less than excellent? New offensive coordinator Kellen Moore promised changes and has delivered, as the Eagles are more diverse in their formations and use of pre-snap motion. They’re fifth in EPA per play and eighth in points per drive. The offense works.

But the offense is also one of the run-heaviest units we’ve seen in recent years. The Eagles are the only team that has called more runs (50.4% of plays) than passes this season, and they’re behind only the 2022 Falcons (50.6%) in called-run percentage for the title of run-heaviest team of the NFL Next Gen Stats era (since 2016). When we factor in things like down and distance and score differential, the Eagles are fourth in the NFL this season with a 10.1% run rate over expectation.

This is a recent-ish development. Through the first four weeks of the season, the Eagles were only 2.2% in run rate over expectation. Remember, they went 2-2 in those games, including a Week 4 game against the Buccaneers in which both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith were absent. They were 0.6% in run rate over expectation in that game — a totally average run/pass ratio for a normal NFL offense. But if they had to play a game tomorrow without Brown and Smith, how much would we expect them to run the ball over expectation?

Starting in Week 6 when the Eagles returned from their bye, they’ve been below 10.0% run rate over expectation only twice. Here it is in timeline form:

Now, because Jalen Hurts is a mobile quarterback, it can be hard to riddle out how much of this run-heavy skew is a referendum on him. Any offense that maximizes Hurts is going to rely heavily on the running game; Baltimore’s offense with Jackson and Indianapolis’ offense with Anthony Richardson have also had significant run rates over expectation. It’d be dumb not to do it. Similarly, if you have Barkley, you’d be catastrophically dumb to not give him the football a ton.

But it’s fair to say that the Eagles have succeeded on offense by maximizing Barkley and the offensive line, and they have subsequently succeeded by minimizing Hurts. Hurts has 10 victories this season in which he completed 20 or fewer passes. Since 2000, he’s only the 28th quarterback to have double-digit wins in a season with 20 or fewer completions. The record is 12, shared by 2001 Kordell Stewart, 2004 Ben Roethlisberger and 2011 Alex Smith. There’s a good chance Hurts’ name joins those three by the end of the season.

Again, this is not a direct referendum on Hurts. It’s just further evidence that the Eagles do not need to ask him to do a lot as a passer in order to win games, and that they are consciously making that choice. The Eagles are a run-the-ball, shorten-the-game, play-great-defense sort of team — the kind of team we thought was going extinct in the modern NFL. This is not the model the Eagles followed in 2022, when they had a run rate over expectation of 3.0% on offense and had serious problems against the run on defense. This is a new approach.

The passing game has not just been minimized; it has also remained simple. Do you remember when Hurts was banging the drum coming into the season for more throws to the intermediate middle of the field? He had three such attempts in Week 1 and four such attempts in Week 2, and he hasn’t had more than two in a game since. On the season, 6.8% of Hurts’ throws have gone to the intermediate middle, up barely from last season’s 5.9% and squarely in line with his career average.

You might expect a team running the football as spectacularly as these Eagles to run a lot of play-action passes, but Hurts is using play-action at a lower rate for the third consecutive season. And you might expect a team running the football as splendidly as these Eagles to have a generally unpressured QB — because defensive linemen must first play the run — but Hurts’ pressure rate is the highest it has been since his rookie season. Both of these issues have the same root cause: Hurts simply does not play fast.

Here’s a good example against the Panthers. Carolina sends a blitz and ends up in man coverage across the board. Hurts opens to his left side, where his two best receivers are in 1-on-1s running double slants. This is a dream scenario for any quarterback — pick your poison and make the throw.

Hurts freezes, pumps and then bails. It was not the only time he did it in this game. Here’s the first play out of halftime. The Eagles have once again gotten Brown in a 1-on-1 situation, this time with Michael Jackson, who has been one of the NFL’s worst cornerbacks this season. Hurts has a clean platform and sees Brown breaking into the sideline. For whatever reason, he eats the throw, bails and throws it away.

It’s odd to see these issues from a quarterback who has made a lot of hay by just trusting Brown implicitly, no matter the coverage. But a lot of Hurts’ decision-making this season has been difficult to understand or predict. He turned the ball over quite a bit to start the season and has certainly become more cautious in the new run-happy approach — exactly what you want from your quarterback in a grind-it-out, control-the-ball philosophy. But that doesn’t change the fact that Hurts is turning down many throws he should attempt.

Look at the backside dig here from Jahan Dotson — one of those precious intermediate middle throws that Hurts wanted to see more. After Hurts resets in the pocket, it is open for a huge gain. But Hurts never picks his eyes up.

As in all aspects of quarterback play, there is give and there is take. Last season, Hurts’ success as a scrambler totally cratered. He seemed less than 100 percent physically, but he also didn’t seem to want to tuck and run at all. And while Hurts is now reluctant to make throws this season, he’s also averaging 10 yards per scramble — the best number of his career. He’s picking up a first down on 56% of his scrambles (also the best of his career). And he’s hitting an explosive scramble 31.3% of the time (almost the best number of his career). By the data, this is one of the best scrambling seasons of the past 15 years.

We can argue that Hurts has replaced some pass attempts with scrambles, and that those scrambles are largely valuable. But we must also note that Hurts has replaced some pass attempts with sacks, and that those sacks are very bad. Hurts’ sack rate of 9.0% is the worst of his career and worse than every other quarterback this season save for Deshaun Watson, Will Levis and Caleb Williams. Not the best company …

Some of Hurts’ sudden increase in sack rate is the result of holding the ball longer as he struggles to make quick decisions in the pocket — stuff we’ve already seen. But the league is also getting wise to Hurts’ game as a pocket manager. Hurts loves to move to his right and generally struggles when rolling to his left, so opposing defensive coordinators have increasingly rushed him with the intent to move him out of the pocket to his right, then converge on his position.

Watch this blitz from the Ravens early in the Week 13 game. See how Marlon Humphrey (No. 44) comes screaming off Hurts’ right side, but once he slips beyond Hurts’ peripheral vision, he spins and pursues him as Hurts “escapes” to his right. Watch defensive end Odafe Oweh (No. 99), who sits on his block without rushing, just waiting for Hurts to escape to the right so he can peel off and chase him. As Nnamdi Madubuike (No. 92) and Roquan Smith (No. 0) detonate the interior and make Hurts feel the heat, the entire Ravens pass rush knows Hurts has been lured to his right.

If the Eagles really are what it seems they’ve become over the past two months — a run-first team that minimizes the passing game and tries to manage the game script the whole way — then it’s worth wondering what they’d look like down multiple scores. The Eagles trailed the Ravens 9-0 for two drives late in the first quarter and early in the second, but that was long before they would have been forced to abandon the running game. Other than that, the only snaps Hurts has taken in a multiscore deficit this season came in the loss to the Buccaneers in Week 4. Every other game has been within one score or friendlier.

It’s much easier to maintain friendly game states when you’re playing the Panthers, Rams and Bengals. In fact, when you’re playing the Eagles’ schedule, you’re running pretty pure. By success rate, the Eagles have played exactly two above-average defenses this season across their 13 opponents: the Browns (fifth) and Ravens (12th). By EPA, it’s the same thing; they’ve played the Packers (ninth) and Saints (16th, just barely making the cut).

This will change when they face the Steelers this week. Pittsburgh’s defense is actually good. But we might enter the 2024 playoffs not really knowing what it looks like when the Eagles and Hurts are forced to pass. Is Hurts capable of shouldering more of the offense down 11 points in the third quarter against a Lions team that wants nothing more than to sit on the football in the fourth? What about against a Vikings team that is probably going to score again on another Sam Darnold deep ball?

Maybe we’ll never find out. Maybe the Eagles’ defense will remain so dominant that they never fall that far behind or rely on Barkley’s late-game performances to bail them out. Maybe Barkley’s early-game performances will be enough that it doesn’t matter either way. But this Eagles team is sneakily anachronistic, and the team that beats them will be the team that yanks them back into the 21st century.

Second Take: Don’t expect that again from the Rams …

ESPN’s “First Take” is known for, well, providing the first take on things — the instant reactions. Second Take is not a place for instant reactions but rather the spot where I’ll let the dust settle before taking perhaps a bit of a contrarian view.

I don’t know who hurt me, but I have apparently decided to become the guy who throws cold water on the Rams’ party.

Make no mistake, the Rams were exemplary Sunday afternoon. I’m not taking anything away from their performance against the Bills. I haven’t seen quarterback Matthew Stafford shred like that in a minute, and it was a delight. I watch every Puka Nacua catch in slow motion, and I still don’t understand how the guy does it. And the offensive line and running game finally looked like what we hoped it might before the season began and injuries accumulated. Against the Bills, the Rams were really all that and a bag of chips.

In the wake of that performance, I have seen several claims that the Rams are back. That’s understandable. They’ve played eight games with both Nacua and Cooper Kupp healthy, and they’re 6-2 in those. In the past four weeks, only six offensive linemen have taken snaps for the Rams, with one switch at right tackle being the only change — an enormous relief from the carousel of 11 players who took snaps in the first 10 weeks of the season. Incidentally, they are four of the Rams’ six best games this season by EPA per play. Coincidence? I think not.

The return of the McVay-Stafford-Kupp-Nacua machine — which is really an unmatched viewing experience for the combined expertise of the passing game — has blinded us to the reality of the Rams, though. Yes, they are 7-6 and only one game back in the NFC West. Yes, they have another game against the Seahawks in Week 18, which means they control their own destiny. Win out, and they win the NFC West. But this is still a roster with problems.

The 37 points produced by the offense (remember, the Rams blocked a punt for a touchdown) are all too easily erasing the 42 points allowed by the defense. The Rams are 29th in EPA per play allowed this season defensively. Only the Bengals, Panthers and Jaguars are worse. They are giving up a whopping 2.5 points per drive. The offense has to be perfect (as it was on Sunday) in order to outpace an opposing offense with any teeth. Remaining on the Rams’ schedule are the 49ers, Jets, Cardinals and Seahawks. And all three of their divisional opponents have above-average offenses on the season by success rate and EPA.

Sunday’s performance just isn’t repeatable. Sure, every game will look something like that — Stafford throwing screens to Nacua, Kyren Williams rumbling for consistent gains — but the Rams’ offense was just perfect against Buffalo, and you can’t consistently be perfect in the NFL. Los Angeles ended the day 11-for-15 on third down; only one team has converted more third downs on 15-plus chances in a game this season. (It was the Chiefs, because of course). In fact, in the past 10 seasons, only 10 teams have gone 11-for-15 or better on that many third downs in a game.

Stafford didn’t turn the ball over in this game, which was huge since the Rams didn’t have a free possession to spot the Bills. Heck, Stafford didn’t even have a sack in this game — again, huge, as falling behind the sticks would have really hurt that magical third-down rate. Stafford has played 219 regular-season and playoff games, and this was his 13th career contest with no sacks and no picks. It’s hard for a pocket-passing quarterback who attempts plenty of tight-window throws to totally avoid negatives, and while it is excellent and delightful that Stafford pulled it off, we should not expect him to do so again.

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Dan Orlovsky calling in receipts after Rams’ win over Bills

Dan Orlovsky calling in receipts after Rams’ win over Bills

When I watch the film, I see a Rams team that just couldn’t miss. Nacua made every clutch grab up against the sideline. Stafford didn’t spray a single pass attempt. The Rams’ pass protection held up, and even when it didn’t, Stafford made them right … and even when he didn’t, his pass catchers did. It was an excellent game from a talented offense, and I have no doubt that we’ll see more great games from it down the stretch. But this wasn’t just a great game — it was a perfect one, and it should not be the bar we set for the Rams moving forward.

We have 13 Rams games on the season — yes, many of them with an offensive line shake-up, and many of them without Nacua and Kupp — and the overwhelming evidence is that this offense has a thin margin for error. Even with offensive line stability, the Rams have some liabilities on their front. Even with Nacua and Kupp back, they can have quiet passing games (see: last week against the Saints). Stafford has shown signs of age at 36. There have been fumbling problems and red zone issues, too. Those issues didn’t just evaporate with one win over the Bills, no matter how exciting it was.

From y’all

The best part of writing this column is hearing from all of you. Hit me on X (@BenjaminSolak) or by email (benjamin.solak@espn.com) anytime — but especially on Monday each week — to ask a question and potentially get it answered here.

From David:“If you’re Minnesota, at what point do you consider keeping Sam Darnold and trading J.J. McCarthy, who might have a tad more value considering this year’s class?”

I would absolutely be looking into this if I was GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. This is a rough upcoming quarterback class, as David alludes to here. McCarthy is coming off a major knee injury, of course, so I don’t expect Minnesota would get the same draft pick back that it spent on him (No. 10 overall after trading up from No. 11). But the Vikings could easily get a first-rounder for a 22-year-old passer, whom the league just scouted and loved one cycle ago. (McCarthy is younger than Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders!)

While I’m hesitant to say that Darnold is a franchise quarterback who warrants a huge extension, it is clear that he can work in Kevin O’Connell’s offense in a way previous stopgaps (Joshua Dobbs, Nick Mullens) could not. Darnold’s arm talent has shined in this offense, and O’Connell has the scheme dialed in to protect Darnold from his worst self — they’re finding a way to get long-developing dropbacks without inviting an above-average pressure rate. It’s very impressive stuff.

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Shannon Sharpe: Vikings shouldn’t pay Sam Darnold

Shannon Sharpe explains why he would not give Sam Darnold a long-term contract despite his stellar season for the Vikings.

Fundamentally, if one of the value adds on your team is that your coach is capable of making something like this work with Darnold, then you should maximize that edge by giving Darnold a Baker Mayfield-esque deal and securing quality offense without paying $50-plus million, as other teams have to do when they have elite quarterbacks.

However, I can guarantee that the Vikings will not do this. And that’s not because they leaked to just about everybody with a microphone last week that they were not going to extend Darnold. It’s because there is no reason for Adofo-Mensah to take the risk. If he trades McCarthy away and this decision goes poorly for any reason at all, he’d be viewed as the man who made an unprecedented decision and paid the price. Maybe he deals McCarthy, who then turns out to be decent. Maybe Darnold falls off a cliff. Any number of things outside of his control could happen.

If he instead rides with McCarthy and lets Darnold walk, and that decision goes poorly for any reason at all, the media would largely hold him as a guy who made an understandable choice and got unlucky.

It’s hard to get an NFL general manager gig. There are only 32 of them, and they go fast. Once you have one, a big part of the job is holding the seat for as long as possible. It’s easy for me to say from my office chair that I’d investigate the Darnold path, but for the sake of keeping things sweet with ownership and making no waves, I’m not sure I’d do the same thing were I in Kwesi’s (presumably much nicer) office chair.

From Kath:“Will the Chiefs ever stop getting away with it?”

In a cosmic sense, in which the expanse of time becomes so vast that all realities are encompassed therein? Yes. For our purposes? No.

From JP:“Will Kirk Cousins be the starter for the Falcons in Week 1 of 2025?”

Man, if the Falcons drafted a quarterback with the eighth overall pick, and this caliber of play from Cousins is not enough to get that guy on the field ASAP, I really don’t know what the plan is there.

From Liam:“Will the Bears ever make me happy?”

No. Consider a different hobby.

From Ryan:“How much of the Bills’ D getting demolished by the Rams is an indictment of the unit vs. ‘sometimes you get got by a HOF QB-WR connection?'”

I didn’t really touch on the Bills’ side of things earlier when talking about this game, so I’ll hit that point here. It’s about 80% the latter. Buffalo pressured Stafford and threw weird rotations at him. It pressed Nacua, covered him with different bodies and flew to him in zone coverage. It just didn’t really matter. Sometimes the other guys are cracked. C’est la vie.

The remaining 20% is focused on the Bills’ run defense. It was far from a spectacular day for the Rams’ running game — Kyren Williams had 29 carries for 87 yards, and Blake Corum added another 34 yards on eight carries — but some of the late-game clock grinding conceals the issue. The Bills continue to lose to bigger offensive lines and running games that get additional bodies into the blocking scheme. That’s significant with a date against the Lions upcoming. And for the AFC playoff picture, it’s worth wondering what happens when they meet the Chargers or Steelers — let alone the Ravens — again.

Next Ben Stats

NFL Next Gen Stats are unique and insightful nuggets of data that are gleaned from tracking chips and massive databases. Next Ben Stats are usually numbers I made up. Both are below.

767: That’s how many receiving yards Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba has from the slot this season. It’s 217 yards more than the next-best player (Ladd McConkey, 550).

Smith-Njigba has benefited from staying on the field, but even from a per-game perspective, Smith-Njigba’s 59-yard average from the slot still outpaces that of Chris Godwin (50.7), Adam Thielen (47.0) and Josh Downs (46.9), who round out the top five with JSN and McConkey.

And from a pace perspective, this will be one of the most productive slot seasons we’ve seen in recent memory. In the past five years, only 2021 Cooper Kupp (77.7) and 2020 Cole Beasley (63.2) averaged more receiving yards per game from the slot than Smith-Njigba’s 59.0.

It’s a rather new development, too. Through the first seven weeks, Smith-Njigba was running a ton of routes from the slot but really only catching his short targets. Accordingly, he wasn’t producing explosives. In that span, Smith-Njigba caught four of 13 targets thrown 10-plus yards downfield. But starting in Week 8 — the first game that DK Metcalf missed — he has caught 16 of 22. As such, Smith-Njigba is averaging 81.2 receiving yards from the slot over the past six weeks, better than even Kupp’s 2021 triple-crown season.

Seattle is quietly becoming a legitimate NFC playoff threat, and the emergence of Smith-Njigba is a big reason. Most teams are not equipped to deal with a high-volume receiver from the slot who can win downfield like JSN.

10: That’s how many quarterbacks have had at least four consecutive starts with no passing touchdowns and at least one interception in the 2000s. Cousins is on such a streak. In his past four games, Cousins has thrown zero touchdowns to eight interceptions. He has even fumbled the ball another four times, losing three of them.

As for the other quarterbacks with similarly dreary streaks, we have: rookie year Alex Smith, 2000 Chris Chandler (also for the Falcons), Ryan Lindley over three years for the Cardinals, Derek Anderson over three years for the Bills and Panthers, Brady Quinn over four years for the Browns and Chiefs, and 2011 Curtis Painter after both Peyton Manning and Kerry Collins got hurt. Also included are 2005 Brett Favre and 2006 Ben Roethlisberger, which is kind of encouraging? Of course, those were both young players who got better, which doesn’t exactly describe Cousins right now.

Shrewd readers will notice that I have named only nine quarterbacks. Who is the 10th? It’s current Mac Jones, who has thrown no touchdowns but at least one pick in his past five starts — the longest such streak of the 2000s. He even kept it going in a game the Jaguars won this past weekend. Next week, the Jags get the Jets, and we’ll see if Jones can keep the streak going. The record for consecutive games with zero TD passes and at least one INT is six starts, held by Jim Plunkett and Marty Domres. History in the making!

446: That’s how many consecutive snaps Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby has played. That is the longest streak by a defensive lineman in the history of NFL Next Gen Stats (since 2016). Crosby has not missed a snap since Week 6. That seems impossible. It’s unheard of. Of the four longest streaks of unmissed snaps for defensive linemen in the Next Gen Stats database, Crosby has three of them, and this one he’s building is his best yet.

He’s doing this for a toothless Raiders team that has no hope of anything, which is commendable in and of itself. But you know what is even cooler? Despite the absolutely unprecedented mileage on his body right now, Crosby still had seven pressures on 35 dropbacks against Tampa Bay, including three pressures against Buccaneers left tackle Tristan Wirfs. Wirfs is easily one of the five best tackles in football and has only given up three pressures to two other players this season.

There is not another player in the league like Crosby. The Defensive Player of the Year race is a mess this season, and I think Crosby should win it just for sheer endurance. (Not really, I’m exaggerating.)

57.8%: That’s Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold’s completion percentage on throws 20-plus yards downfield under coach Kevin O’Connell. Since 2000, only four quarterbacks have a better single-season completion percentage on such throws (minimum 20 attempts).

Who are those quarterbacks, you ask? Jimmy Garoppolo (2019), Nick Mullens (2020) and Brock Purdy (2023) lead the pack. That’s right — three 49ers quarterbacks under Kyle Shanahan. The fourth is Matthew Stafford with the 2023 Rams under Sean McVay.

Deep-ball accuracy is often a receiver/scheme stat masquerading as a QB stat. Because deep balls are in the air for so long, the receiver’s ability to track and adjust is magnified in importance, and the need for ball winners as defensive backs get back in phase is critical. Similarly, the ability to open receivers up 20-plus yards downfield is the absolute crowning jewel of a schemer. And as we go down the list, we find more and more Shanahan/McVay branches, including 2023 C.J. Stroud, 2023 Mullens, 2022 Tua Tagovailoa and 2023 Jared Goff.

With that said: Darnold still hit 52% of his deep throws two seasons ago, and there has never been any doubt about his arm. When Darnold is hot, nobody is throwing the ball better into downfield windows in the league — not Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen — nobody.

‘Monday Night (40) Millions’

Each week, we will pick out one or two of the biggest storylines from “Monday Night Football” and break down what it means for the rest of the season.

Bengals receiver Ja’Marr Chase had 14 catches, 177 yards and two scores against the Cowboys on Monday night. There have been only four games this season with 10-plus catches, 175-plus yards and multiple scores — and Chase has three of them. (I could give you 50 guesses on the fourth, and I’m not sure you’d come up with Jauan Jennings.)

Chase has 1,319 yards on the season, and his 101.5 yards per game is just behind Nico Collins for the best pace this season. If Chase stays on this pace for 17 games, he will finish the season with 1,726 receiving yards — enough to take the 11th spot on the single-season receiving list from Michael Thomas (2019). Chase is also knocking on the door of the receptions list, with 93 on the season and a 17-game pace of 122. That would be tied for 14th all time.

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Ja’Marr Chase ekes out TD for Bengals

Joe Burrow finds Ja’Marr Chase who gets both feet in the end zone to bring the Bengals level vs. the Cowboys.

It’s worth remembering that the Bengals had a chance to pay Chase this summer. In fact, they had many chances. Chase held out for so long it was uncertain if he’d play in Week 1. With Justin Jefferson and CeeDee Lamb signing deals worth annual rates of $35 million and $34 million, respectively, Chase’s price tag in August was likely right around $35 million per year. This upcoming summer, I imagine he’ll be trying to get to $40 million instead.

The Bengals’ approach to cap management has long been covered and will be covered again this offseason, and I have no interest in diluting an elite Chase performance with the cold water of fiscal reality. The Bengals are going to pay the 24-year-old Chase like he’s the best receiver in football, because he arguably is just that. If not for that pesky former LSU college teammate of his in Jefferson, I’m not sure it would even be a debate.

I know this season has been tough for Cincinnati, but the Bengals still have a top quarterback and a top receiver. In fact, they probably have the best QB-WR duo in the league. That’s as good of a contender foundation as any.