Objective No. 1 for the Cincinnati Bengals this offseason is getting an extension for Ja’Marr Chase done.
In fact, despite the staggering cost of it, doing so feels like the easiest part of the offseason for the Bengals. They probably should have done it last year, then Chase went on to have a Triple Crown season.
But not everyone is so confident that the Bengals can make it work. NBC Sports’ Mike Florio, for example, recently talked about the fact that guarantees were an issue in extension talks with Chase last offseason and why the Bengals appreciated it in that manner.
“The argument last year was, if you can just make it through year four with a guy on a first round contract, you’re saving a ton of money, because he will have always played his fourth year for like, 4 million bucks when you replace that contract with a new deal,” Florio said. “There goes that year where we had him for nothing. This year, he’s due to make $21.8 million. So it’s less of a gap between what you’re giving him and what you could have paid him. The Vikings pulled it off with Justin Jefferson, with far less acrimony.”
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Luckily, for Bengals fans, none of this is really new stuff. Reports around the start of the season said that guarantees and structure of payouts were a big part of the issue for Chase and his reps, to the point another report said Chase felt misled.
Chase’s extension was always going to check in above the $35 million average annual value of Justin Jefferson and likely in the $40 million AAV range. Cincinnati’s job, then, is to get the guarantees right — which likely means big numbers after Year 1. They don’t usually do that, but did for Joe Burrow, so they might need to make another exception.
Burrow, meanwhile, just went on a huge Super Bowl media tour pressuring the Bengals about contracts for Chase, Tee Higgins, Trey Hendrickson, and even tight end Mike Gesicki.
Chase is objective No. 1 for the Bengals, but the front office has some big puzzle pieces to slot together in the coming weeks and months.
