A bye week cup of coffee and shooting the breeze with Bengals legends about great catches and Ja’Marr Chase:

Out in his native California, the first of the great Bengals wide receivers and the prototype of the gamebreakers to come, Isaac Fischer Curtis, is looking at the text of Ja'Marr Chase, the latest in the line, making that confounding 45-yard touchdown catch last Sunday in Miami.

"Incredible catch," Curtis types as he writes what he sees. "Looks like it went from his forearm to his bicep off his right side, and then he grabbed it. It was a juggling act."

It turns out that's the catch that vaulted Chase past Curtis on the all-time Bengals list with more than 7,100 yards. The only Cincy icons in front of him now are Chad Johnson, the magician who made sidelines disappear, and A.J. Green, the boyhood juggler who put the Bengals in the center ring with his carnival act the decade before Chase.

"I didn't know I was still up there," says Curtis, who got all those yards on just 416 catches, the last one zipped from rookie Boomer Esiason more than 40 years ago. "Whenever I see Boomer, he reminds me that he threw me my last catch."

Johnson is the only receiver in this century to lead his conference in receiving yards four straight years when he made Cincinnati and the NFL his personal playground the decade before Green and the decade after Carl Pickens high-jumped the '90s. He got to see Chase's catch live Sunday when he left the Bengals sidelines in Miami and went into the stands.

"You can't see anything down there. The best place is up there at the 40 or 50," Johnson says. "That was nice. Really nice. The 50-50 ball, that was never my strength."

These are the guys who have passed that seemingly eternal flame of a torch carried by the Bengals' royal line of wide receivers. They have either grabbed it, juggled it, high-pointed it, snared it with their fingertips while flying through the air, or dove across turf and grass to hand it to Chase and his running mate Tee Higgins.

Higgins, who broke in wearing Johnson's "85," and Green's basketball height and game, went viral this season, too, when he caught a touchdown while sitting down as he completed one of his Mr. Tennessee Basketball box-outs.

"I saw that one on the highlights," says Curtis, who can get the Bengals only on national games and the occasional 4:25. "What quarterback in the league wouldn't want those two guys?"

Johnson, 48, is now the only man to catch a ball from both Carson Palmer and Joe Burrow in either a game or pregame after he warmed up Burrow last Sunday.

"I told Joe," Johnson says, 'See how there's no one around me? Just like it was in a game.'"

Just like Curtis, 75, is the only receiver to be in a huddle with both Bengals' NFL MVPs Esiason and Kenny Anderson, as well as the should-have-been MVP Greg Cook.

Just like Burrow, 29, is the only man to throw touchdowns to Green and Chase. The line and the catches continue. And so do the definitions of great catches.

As great as Chase's catch was in Miami, Johnson's not so sure it is as good as the touchdown catch he made last month in Houston, the 32-yarder skied from Burrow that Chase momentarily lost before he saw it again just as he was stepping out of the corner of the end zone.

And, those aren't even the best Bengals' catches the Bengals all-time receiver has seen. He goes back to Higgins' last-minute catch that tied the Vikings three years ago when he made a leaping catch of a Jake Browning pass at the Minnesota 1 and then, while spinning around, outstretched an arm to swipe the pylon.

"The best catch I've ever seen," says Johnson, reflecting on the Bengals' greats. "He's so tall (6-4). I don't think people understand how difficult that is to have the awareness to swipe the pylon and to know where you are."

Speaking of great catches against the Vikings, ESPN's Andrew Hawkins made one for the Bengals against Minnesota in their 2013 blowout when he caught quarterback Andy Dalton's 34-yard loft down the left side with his right shoulder pad and survived the ground.

When Hawkins marked up his top five catches of last week, he made Chase's No. 2. He went with Jacksonville's Parker Washington No. 1, only because his one-hander won the game.

"I made it clear that Ja'Marr made the better catch," Hawkins says. "But a lot of it is the moment."

Hawkins has to have a hand in this discussion.

The brother of turn-of-the-century Bengals cornerback Artrell Hawkins, Andrew grew up playing video games in the facility while watching Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh catch everything but Mario. When Hawkins became a Bengal after a stint in the CFL, he became lifelong friends with Green, thought Marvin Jones was one of the best long-ball catchers of his time, and marveled at the ox-strong hands of Mohamad Sanu. In the 2020s, he's been covering the Joe Burrow NFL.

"It got to be routine with A.J. He made one of those every day in training camp," Hawkins says. "He was an alien. That's why we called him, 'Martian Man.' He had this ability to track the ball like there was a chip in it. He'd lose sight of the ball, and then get to the exact spot and find it. It was like NGS (Next Generation Stats) the way he tracked it."

If not Green's greatest catch, Hawkins was on the other sideline for one of his greats. The Halftime Hail Mary against the Browns in 2016 at Paycor Stadium on a 48-yard fantasy football throw from Dalton at the gun.

In a sea of Cleveland defenders, Green skied and with his left hand, stopped the ball before he got trucked by a body. In the next instant, the ball was still in the frame, and he kept his eyes on it before getting his hands on it, losing it, and then grabbing it back as he hit the ground in a pile of enemy jerseys.

"I didn't think that much of it," Hawkins says. "To me, it was routine."

Chase, though, is the kind of guy that breaks the routine. A seasoned observer of the game from all angles, only two plays in the last month have made Hawkins leap up from the screen and say, "Oh bleep."

Chase in Houston. Chase in Miami.

"Ja'Marr is just straight up talent. He doesn't think to go out there and catch the ball that way. He just can," Hawkins says. "And that's where it makes him special because it's not like he's 6-4 like A.J. He doesn't have 4X-sized gloves like Marvin Jones. He just has a natural, God-given ability to come down with the football.

"And when he catches the ball, very much like A.J., he doesn't even celebrate like it's the best catch he's ever made. It's just like, of course, I was going to come down with it. It's routine to him almost."

Chad Johnson doesn't have a favorite catch of his own. There's so many of them. Hawkins still remembers the ones that made him cheer as a high-schooler.

"He'd go airborne and hang in the air, snatch it right before he drops to the ground," Hawkins says. "Over the middle. He was a great over-the-shoulder catcher. That's a talent in and of itself, as well. It's never going to look as good as Ja'Marr Chase and A.J. because you're not going up and snatching it like the way we think. But Chad's ability to track it over his shoulder, there's a world where that's more difficult than some of these other catches, to be honest."

Apples and oranges. Take your pick.

Johnson recalls the acrobatics of Pickens in the '90s.

"He was a big boy," says Johnson of the 6-2 Pickens, who played like he was 6-6. "He made some great catches off that moon ball from Jeff Blake."

And not just Blake. If Hawkins is talking moments, Pickens has plenty of them. The master of the contested catch, Pickens was a walking track meet combining high-jumping and pole-vaulting with football to win games for any number of quarterbacks.

He made a leaping steal from a Bears defender in the last minute on an Esiason throw that put a 1992 game into overtime in the last seconds that ended up as a win. He won the '97 opener with 37 seconds left on a jump ball from Blake against the Cardinals.  The next year, when everyone thought Neil O'Donnell was spiking against the Steelers, Pickens ripped the ball from cornerback Dewayne Washington at the goal line for the winning 25-yard touchdown with 38 seconds left. Then the year after that, he won Akili Smith's debut with five seconds left for a two-yard touchdown knifing through Browns DBs Corey Fuller and  Ryan McNeil.

(And then there's Pickens'12-catch game against the Oilers that made cornerback Cris Dishman apologize to his teammates, coaches, family, "and the entire city of Houston.")

If Hawkins judges his catches by moments, Houshmandzadeh, Johnson's 500-catch running mate, goes by how good the defense is.

"I go back to the games against the Steelers and Ravens when it could go either way," Houshmandzadeh says of his buddy. "Chad didn't have to make those contested catches because he would just separate with those great feet. I would get on him and say, 'Why do you make those diving catches? You should get up and run.'"

Houshmandzadeh, who appears on all platforms FOX, saw both Chase catches.

"The one in Houston was probably harder," Houshmandzadeh says.  "That (Miami) one looks like it's harder because it just was one hand, but the one in Houston, you get your eyes to the ball so late to make that catch, that's the hard part about that. You're standing and turning and trying to track the ball.

"I think Ja'Marr's catch against Houston is such a good catch because they're so good defensively. Their secondary is really good. "There's just a little more emphasis on the plays you make versus the better teams."

Which is why one of Houshmandzadeh's favorite catches of his own is a juggling grab in the end zone he caught twice against the Steelers. The other favorite gets back to one of Hawkins' moments, a fourth-and-10 over the middle in 2004 against the Giants at Paycor that allowed Johnson to win it a few snaps later in the last minute. Quarterback Jon Kitna told Houshmandzadeh, "I'm throwing it to you no matter what."

It was high, but Houshmandzadeh found the springs. "Two guys were right there on me."

Moments.

The Bengals needed a win to take the 2009 AFC North title. They didn't want to try to do it in the season finale the next week on the road against the Jets in what had been an emotional ten days since the death of wide receiver Chris Henry.

Late in a 10-10 game with the Chiefs, quarterback Carson Palmer embarked on what amounted to a 99-yard drive that came to rest on a third down at the Chiefs 6 at the snap before the two-minute warning. Johnson, then Chad Ochocinco, was the target on a slant. Palmer rifled it slightly to the outside.

"Chad had that great body control," Curtis says.

The Ocho torqued that body ever so slightly, ever so quickly as he reached back and snatched it before falling to the turf. Then he got up and flashed one and five with his fingers that signified Henry's No. 15.

"A diamond route," says Johnson, who remembers the defender, cornerback Brandon Flowers. "I widened him out. Carson put it right where it's supposed to be. Go to the ground to secure it and make sure nobody punches it out."

Out in California, Curtis remembers a game against the Oilers as he tried to sort through all his memorable catches.

"Kenny was so accurate, I just had to make plays," says Curtis, as modest now as he was great then.

But there was this one play:

"It's been so long," Curtis says. "It seems I was going down the sideline. I reached out with my left hand and grabbed it with one hand, and kind of flicked it back to me. And cut underneath the cornerback and ended up scoring."

And then there was another play against the Oilers and one of the NFL's most rugged defenses. At Riverfront in the November of a tight AFC Central race with the Bengals trailing, 27-24.

On a fourth-and-four from the Oilers 47 with 42 seconds left, Anderson was just trying to get into field goal range. He hit Curtis at the 35 down the seam with a defender on his back. He broke that tackle, broke another one, and outraced three others to the end zone.

Like Hawkins says, the moment. Like Houshmandzadeh says, the opponent. Like they all say about Chase, just flat out fun to watch.

"I enjoy watching him play," Curtis says. "The acceleration. "His route running. His play after the catch. He's elusive, hard to cover, hard to catch. He's  got it all. Very dependable. You know he'll go get that ball. He'll go underneath. He'll go up top. Every team wants a guy like that. He's just so dynamic."

The line continues.