Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase generated a lot of buzz after his team fell to 1-3 for public comments.
Those comments got him yanked into head coach Zac Taylor’s office for what Chase later admitted he thought was trouble — only to find himself praised.
Buy Bengals TicketsAsked about that this week, Taylor explained that Chase has more than earned the right to speak his mind. It’s a lengthy response, but worth reading as a whole for the message it sends.
“He works as hard as anybody, which when you work as hard as anybody, you’re allowed to have some confidence and talk like that,” Taylor said according to Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. “I’ve got problems with people that don’t work hard. And then if you say things that are maybe on the fringe, on the line a little bit, you don’t put in the work, you’re not doing all the things Ja’Marr does. When he combines that with confidence that makes him the type of player he is, that gives him the edge he’s got. I love that about him.
“We ask a lot of him in practice. He runs and he doesn’t complain. He doesn’t make a mental error due to not paying attention … “He’s got a great understanding because he switches positions all the time. He plays all three spots. He moves more than anybody. He lines up in the backfield, he motions to the backfield. He’s got to know everything and he does and he works his tail off in practice. Extra pre-practice. Runs like crazy during practice.”
A diva, Chase is not. And it sure helps that — as Taylor would agree — Chase’s entire message (not the three-second hand-picked clip) was actually a really mature one.
And as long as people in the building know the long-form intent behind Chase’s messaging, it doesn’t matter how it gets chopped up and analyzed by outsiders.
