Five live reps.

Maybe.

This is what Bengals head coach Zac Taylor calculated last week after Ja’Marr Chase had again bench-pressed the Bengals record book with 16 catches against the Steelers. The man who has taken 93% of his offense's snaps in the last 24 games had already carbo-loaded 15 catches in Arizona two years before.

But Taylor says is Chase broke his record taking all of five live reps in practice with new quarterback Joe Flacco.

Of course, that's nothing. Before his first game as Bengal in that sardined first week prepping for the Packers, Flacco didn't throw a ball to backup tight end Tanner Hudson.

Until pregame warmups.

And that was an accident, a fender-bender on the script.

"Usually, the tight ends, we go in order. Usually Mike (Gesicki), Noah (Fant), me," Hudson says of the pregame catching lines. "I had been going with Jake (Browning), but something happened, and I ended up with Joe, and I caught one of those little stick routes we run pregame. Nothing special."

Except a few hours later, Hudson caught Flacco's first touchdown pass as Bengal on a hellacious fourth-and-goal play where the two worked magic on the back line with one pregame flip and the DBs at the other end of the field.

"It's just trusting the process. Then you've got a guy like Joe who's thrown to countless people," Hudson says. "He has such a good feel for things like that."

But 26 catches in two games during in nine days with five live reps?

"Well, Ja'Marr is the best player in the world," Hudson says. "I don't know if that fully explains it. I think Flacco just being a baller that he is. You walk into a team like that, I would probably throw it to him a decent amount, too."

The evolution of Ja'Marr Chase, a first-ballot Pro Football Hall-of-Famer if the numbers survive through the 2020s, continues.

Yes, Canton is an aspiration. But this year, after a decade of dreaming, he is no longer writing those goals on sticky notes and putting them on his mirror. Not after last year's Triple Crown.

Well, there's one written down.

Super Bowl?

"Super Bowl," Chase says.

There are also those 16 catches for 161 yards in the biggest game of the year with a quarterback still learning the language. A Parisian tourist directing traffic at The Eiffel Tower with a guidebook, and throwing the ball to Chase, a guy with the same quarterback since college.

Zac Taylor, a self-described football nerd, stirs. A Big 12 Player of the Year as a Nebraska quarterback who has nurtured Joe Burrow, the nerd knows something about throwing and catching. Five live reps? He hasn't seen it, either.

Or this.

How about no live reps on this play?

The six-step speed-out. Every backyard has it, right?

Taylor figures Chase and Flacco have hooked up on a handful of those in the two games. There were a couple in the final 40 hurry-up seconds of Thursday night's first half in the drive that yielded a field goal at the gun.

"An underrated element is a six-step speed-out to anybody," Taylor says. "That takes a lot of time. Because usually as a quarterback you're throwing that on a plant before the receiver is out of his break and throwing to an area … He's put it right on the sideline and Ja'Marr has been able to go out there and get it."

All timing. Meant for a safe, secure dozen yards stepping into the sideline. No YAC. Catch the defense before they see the rest of the routes evolving. Just a first down. Before Green Bay and Pittsburgh, they never repped the six-step speed-out live. Maybe they ran it once on air. With no defense.

Maybe.

"Just as a quarterback that had to spend 100 reps with a receiver before I trusted it in a game, to see him walk out there with no live reps of that one …," Taylor admires.

"It's a trust. Joe says I'm going to put it out there and trust Ja'Marr's going to be able to go get it, and Ja'Marr's trusting, 'Hey, I'm just going to run my route with great detail to get this corner to bail, and as I snap my head around, I'm going to locate the football. We've completed all but one."

Chase shrugs.

Five live reps.

"That's a Flacco question. 100 percent," Chase says. "I don't know. I would assume he expects us to be open. That's the biggest thing."

Flacco shrugs, too, good-humoring the question of just exactly how records can be broken with five live reps. Remember, he has made history, too, in the last two games by throwing for at least 550 yards, three touchdowns with no picks on 65% passing. No quarterback has done that in his first two starts with a team, via OptaSports.

"I'll tell you what I told you guys when I first got here," Flacco says. "(Chase and Tee Higgins) are two of the best at what they do. If you can't find a way to put the ball somewhere around them and complete it, then we're in trouble. So I'll keep it there.

"I mean, when you get guys that are good, it's easy to read their body language, so you know when they're coming out of their breaks. So you can really trust your footwork and know that it's going to time up with his and that's what it is."

But five live reps? It not only reflects what Flacco's 18 seasons mean, but also Chase's hold on the game as its best player.

At Paycor Stadium, only quarterbacks coach Brad Kragthorpe has known Chase as long as college teammate and chum Joe Burrow. A former LSU quarterback, Kragthorpe's first job was as an offensive assistant in 2018 during Chase's freshman year at Baton Rouge.

As he clicks through the tape of the Steelers' game, he comes to maybe the biggest play. About halfway through the second quarter, and the Bengals down 10-0, facing third-and-10, Flacco is given time by the chipping of both edgers. There is Chase settling in a zone and Flacco easily finding him on the deep curl with a zip-line throw that gets the crowd and the Bengals back in it.

"Ja'Marr was always elite against man," says Kragthorpe as he watches Chase knife into a spot between Steelers safety DeShon Elliott and linebacker Payton Wilson. "But his biggest improvement has been reading the nuances of defenses and attacking zones, getting to the voids. And Joe has seen every kind of zone, so he knows where those voids are going to be. You're looking at a combination of things."

The Ja'Marr Evolution continues. He admits the injury to Burrow and the arrival of Flacco has accelerated his leadership, already on a fast track with his election to captain at the start of the season.

"That's the other thing that he's really come a long way on," Kragthorpe says. "Proud of him how he he's done that."

Was that the catalyst for his maniacal downfield block on one of those long Chase Brown runs? Probably not. He's done it before. But as if he's quietly slipping into a zone, he did the leader thing and downplayed it while shouting out a teammate.

"I wouldn't say I'm an elite blocker," he teased the media this week. "I'll take decent. I've got a lot of room to improve. I already told Chase. But, honestly, it takes effort. And I'm saying you look at (left guard Dalton) Risner from the last game, his effort is every play. It takes a lot of effort and will and want when you're playing out there."

Risner, a seven-year vet who has seen it all, stirred.

"Oh wow. Love that. Really cool," said Risner when relayed the quote. "Sometimes the guy who always has his fist up, always talking about being a leader, man, show me. I think Ja'Marr is more of a show me guy, and I really like that."

If his players didn't see the block, Taylor made sure they saw it when he highlighted it in the Monday meeting. But it sounds like Risner noticed it live.

"Damn right I did. It's hard not to notice," Risner said. "Guy catches the ball, and No. 1, who has 15 catches, is sprinting downfield to get Chase Brown another five, 10 yards. You don't see that out of the best players in the world, and that I respect."

Five live reps for 16 catches, a block, a shot at .500 in another Must-Win home game Sunday. A shrug.

"Good quarterback makes the receiver look good. Good receiver makes the quarterback look good," says Chase who seems to be re-defining the term. "So just complement each other."