Whether wearing baby oil or simply playing as smoothly as a baby’s hindquarters, Ja’Marr Chase was back to his old ways in Cincinnati’s 34-24 win at Carolina on Sunday.
And those ways include big plays, including a slippery 63-yard touchdown to break open a tight game midway through the second quarter. On that touchdown, Chase broke three tackles before a convoy of Bengals escorted him into the end zone. Afterward, he distanced himself from a question on baby oil.
“No,” said Chase, furrowing his eyebrows. “We’ve got to keep that for someone else, Bro. That’s not my question right there.”
Although Chase admitted to using baby oil on his uniform as a youngster, he doesn’t need external help to complement his athletic gifts in the NFL. In fact, in only 49 games, Chase now has 4,017 receiving yards and 32 touchdown receptions. He’s only the fifth player in the Super Bowl era (since 1966) to reach 4,000 and 30, respectively, in his first 50 games, joining Hall of Famers Randy Moss and Jerry Rice in addition to Odell Beckham Jr. and former Bengal A.J. Green.
The Bengals as a team also made a bit of their own history in their first win. For the first time in eight years, they scored touchdowns on both the last possession of the first half and first drive after halftime. But it didn’t come without stress.
Quarterback Joe Burrow might be “sneaky athletic” but he admitted to a brief mental lapse on the drive just prior to halftime, throwing a screen pass to Zack Moss with only six seconds left and no timeouts remaining.
“Maybe not my best decision, but it worked out for us.”
It sure did, thanks to Moss popping up after he slipped and getting out of bounds with only a second left. Moss punched in a 1-yard touchdown on the last play of the half, then Burrow engineered an eight-play, 71-yard drive out of the locker room, culminating in Chase Brown’s 1-yard touchdown. In the span of five minutes, the consecutive drives took the Bengals from a 14-14 tie to a commanding 28-14 lead.
Moss, who followed new Dolphins starting quarterback Snoop Huntley to Utah, combined with Brown to give the Bengals 141 yards and two touchdowns on 31 carries. Along with Andrei Iosivas emerging as a formidable slot receiver, the Bengals’ passing offense (236.0 yards/game) ranks sixth in the league.
“We’ve been moving around, making plays,” said Chase, courtesy of Bengals.com. “The team looked pretty good starting out the first half, which is what we needed, someone to keep the momentum up for us, and all around everybody is making plays.”
Fresh off their first win, Cincinnati (1-3) gets an AFC North showdown at home against first-place Baltimore (3-1) on Sunday, before consecutive road trips against the Giants (1-3) and Browns (1-3).