Yesterday, Jamar Chase and T. Higgins got together, signed their contracts, had a press conference,

answered questions for more than a half hour. It was entertaining. And one of the topics

hovering over the entire negotiation was the influence of quarterback Joe Burrow, who said

plenty of things publicly during Super Bowl

week, and I would assume had some privately delivered messages either directly or through his

representation to the Bengals as this was unfolding. Jamar Chase was asked, among other things,

the role that Joe Burrow played in getting the deals done for his top two receivers.

Here's Chase.

I think it was a big help from just putting out little information, having our back.

You know, I think that's the biggest thing, especially coming from a quarterback.

You know, it's different if me and T vouching for somebody else before our quarterback to vouch for us, I think that's given us a pathway to get us where we got here.

I think we handled the situation well. You know, we didn't do too much in the midst of, not on the media.

I think we handled it the right way. We all talk to each other, you know, about this situation period. So I feel like, you know,

we handled the situation about what we could. Yeah, look, they did. And I think at the end of the

day, they both made some concessions to get the deal done. You could argue that T. Higgins should

have just said, I'll take the $26.16 million and I'll be a free agent next year, and I'll get top of the market money or something close to it.

I'll be that rare guy who truly is an elite player who makes it to unrestricted free agency

and some team will pay me a ridiculous amount of money.

He wanted to stay in Cincinnati.

He talked yesterday right before Jamar Chase made his very tactful comments about

there's nothing to do here. T. Higgins said, I grew up as a Cincinnati Bengals fan. I want to be

here. The player I grew up idolizing, and I assume he was referring to Chad Ocho Cinco,

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