Ja'Marr Chase's cryptic post before practice had Bengals fans buzzing

Things seemed to be returning to normal for the Cincinnati Bengals on the Ja’Marr Chase front after trimming the roster to 53 players and making a claim on the waiver wire.

But not for long.

The morning of the waiver wire claims, Chase posted a funny image of Joe Burrow on his Instagram stories. Not a big deal, though fans wondered what it meant.

The post came after Zac Taylor told reporters that Chase would be practicing with the team as usual from now on and he expected the star wideout to be ready for Week 1.

Naturally, fans construed the post from Chase a number of ways. Maybe it was a response to those comments from Taylor. Maybe it was a response to fans who doubted his status for Week 1. Maybe he just thought the picture was funny. Spoiler — it is funny:

But not long after the post, things took another interesting turn.

It turns out that Chase was, in fact, not practicing with the team as normal later that afternoon, as captured by Kelsey Conway of the Cincinnati Enquirer:

No word yet on what this means, but Chase been a “hold-in” for most of training camp. He attended all but one day of camp, then returned to practice as a participant last week.

The Bengals and Chase are currently talking an extension a year earlier than anticipated after Justin Jefferson reset the market and CeeDee Lamb just got a deal done in Dallas.

Maybe the social media post isn’t about the contract, but the unexpected, new absence from practice likely is.