Before Ja'Marr Chase became a star wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, his dad was molding him into the player he's become — using baby oil.
“He just said, ‘Come here,'” Chase recalled. “Then he rubbed hella baby oil on me … He used to do it almost every game. Then he told me don’t touch myself,” via Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic.
While that baby oil allowed Chase to physically slip away from tacklers in youth football, it's now created a mindset in him to never go down when tacklers first reach him.
“Just putting it in my head that I’m not going to get tackled,” Chase said. “I thought and believed it. Him telling me they are not going to tackle you because you have baby oil on you. They are going to slip off you. Something like that sits in the back of your mind and lets you know you aren’t getting tackled,” via Dehner Jr.
Since his youth football days, Chase has become a defender's nightmare thanks to his elusiveness. At LSU, he won the Fred Biletnikoff award during his sophomore year as the best wide receiver in college football when he caught 84 receptions for 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns.
He's continued to build off that in the NFL, with back-to-back 1,000 yard seasons to start his career, (despite missing five games during his sophomore campaign). The Bengals receiver is well on pace to go for a third consecutive 1,000 yard season as he has 69 receptions for 821 yards and five touchdowns through nine games this season. His youth football mindset has also paid off in the pros — he's second in the NFL in yards after the catch this year with 372.
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