Fresh off the best season of his three-year career, Bengals running back Chase Brown is eligible for a contract extension. While Brown will become a free agent if the Bengals don’t lock him up by March 2027, the two sides are making an effort to prevent that.
Brown told Ben Baby of ESPN that his representatives and the Bengals have been “working hard” on a new deal. The soon-to-be 26-year-old is hopeful they’ll hammer out an agreement.
“I would love to do something and be a part of this team,” he said. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
A fifth-round pick in 2023, Brown accrued just 44 carries in 12 games while backing up Joe Mixon as a rookie. Cincinnati traded Mixon to Houston during the ensuing offseason, though, and Brown has taken over as the Bengals’ primary back since then.
Brown burst on the scene as a major dual-threat scorer in 2024, when he found the end zone 11 times (seven rushing, four receiving) in 16 games. He also rushed for 990 yards on 229 carries (4.3 YPC) and added 54 receptions for another 360 yards.
Following up his 2024 breakout, Brown put together his second straight 11-TD showing this season (six rushing, five receiving). He also played all 17 games, surpassed the 1,000-yard mark for the first time (1,019 yards on 232 attempts; 4.4 YPC), and caught 69 passes for 437 yards. With 1,456 yards from scrimmage, Brown ranked 11th in the league.
Brown is scheduled to make approximately $3.7MM in 2026. As far as a long-term arrangement goes, his camp may look to the the extensions the Bills’ James Cook and the Rams’ Kyren Williams signed before last season as potential comps. Cook inked a four-year, $48MM pact with $30MM in guarantees. Williams signed a three-year, $33MM deal with a guaranteed $23MM. Both Cook (seventh) and Williams (eighth) rank near the back half of the league’s top 10 in AAV at their position.
While the Bengals want to keep Brown, it remains to be seen how far they’ll go to keep him under wraps. They already have their three best offensive players, quarterback Joe Burrow and the wide receiver tandem of Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, eating up a massive chunk of cap space for the foreseeable future. Every member of that trio is signed through at least 2028.
The Bengals have a superb offensive core in place, but they’ll also need to pour resources into fixing a defense that was among the worst in the league in 2025. With an injured Burrow missing nine games and their defense struggling to stop anyone, the Bengals largely wasted Brown’s high-end performance during a 6-11 season.