Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase’s life in the NFL has gotten off to a bit of a tricky start. The No. 5 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft has shown that some rust developed from not playing college football last season, as the sure-fire hands that made him such a dangerous threat in LSU’s national championship-winning offense in 2019 haven’t quite caught up to this level of football yet.
Earlier this week, Chase sat down with the media following a Bengals practice and offered up an interesting reason for why he’s had a rough go of things so far: the ball.
“The ball is different because it is bigger,” Chase said. “It doesn’t have the white stripes on the side so you can’t see the ball coming from the tip point so you actually have to look for the strings on the ball at the top, which is hard to see because whole ball is brown and you have the six strings that are white. But for the most part, just have to get used to it and find out what I am comfortable with catching.”
Let’s head to the rule books to get to the bottom of this. Here is what the NFL’s official rules say:
The ball shall be made up of an inflated (12 1/2 to 13 1/2 pounds) urethane bladder enclosed in a pebble grained, leather case (natural tan color) without corrugations of any kind. It shall have the form of a prolate spheroid and the size and weight shall be: long axis, 11 to 11 1/4 inches; long circumference, 28 to 28 1/2 inches; short circumference, 21 to 21 1/4 inches; weight, 14 to 15 ounces.
For the NCAA, here is a screenshot of what their rulebook says about the size of the ball.
It sounds a bit silly on the surface, but Chase is correct about the adjustment. The good news is that the Bengals seem confident that he’ll make it, and Joe Burrow will eventually get to a point where he’s throwing deep balls to his favorite target from his days at LSU again.
