Is Ja'Marr Chase Actually Untouchable in Dynasty Trades?

Close to it. Chase owns the top Dynasty Value Score of any receiver we track, he's locked into Cincinnati on a $161 million extension, and his 2025 season — the "down" year that gets brought up in trade talks — still finished as a top-four fantasy receiver. Nobody is truly untouchable in dynasty. Chase is about as close as the format gets.

The quick answer

Chase scores a 9,717 Dynasty Value Score, the highest mark of any wide receiver in our model, just ahead of Amon-Ra St. Brown at 9,627 and CeeDee Lamb at 9,624. He projects for 272.8 half-PPR points in 2026, 16.0 per game. If someone in your league is offering to move him, the honest question isn't whether Chase is good enough to keep — it's whether the return is actually worth breaking up the best receiver room in dynasty.

What actually happened in 2025

Chase's 2025 gets framed as a disappointment because it followed a Triple Crown season — 339.5 half-PPR points, a WR1 finish, 127 catches for 1,708 yards and 17 touchdowns in 2024. Against that bar, almost any follow-up looks like a step back.

Here's what a step back actually looked like: Chase still led the NFL in targets with 185, still caught 125 passes for 1,412 yards, and still finished as a top-four fantasy receiver in half-PPR scoring. The touchdown total dropped from 17 to 8, which accounts for most of the point gap between his two seasons — touchdown rate is the least stable year-to-year stat a receiver produces, and it's exactly the kind of thing that regresses back toward a player's career norm rather than signaling real decline.

The bigger factor behind the dip wasn't Chase. It was Cincinnati's quarterback situation. Joe Burrow played through an injury-shortened season, and a receiver's efficiency tracks his quarterback's health more than almost any other variable in fantasy football.

The variable that matters most for 2026

Burrow enters 2026 healthy, with a full offseason behind him and a Cincinnati passing game that looks considerably more stable than it did a year ago. Early training camp reports already point to the Burrow-to-Chase connection looking sharp, and the Bengals used this offseason to invest heavily on the defensive side of the roster rather than pull back on the passing attack around their two stars.

That matters because Chase's 2025 dip wasn't a talent or role problem — his target share and catch volume both stayed at an elite level even in a down year. A healthy Burrow removes the one real variable that suppressed Chase's touchdown production last season. If that connection looks the way camp reports suggest, 2026 has a real path back toward his 2024 peak rather than a repeat of last year's touchdown-light finish.

The contract removes the other kind of risk

Cincinnati signed Chase to a four-year, $161 million extension in 2025 with $112 million guaranteed — the richest non-quarterback deal in NFL history at the time. That's the same kind of security we flagged with Bijan Robinson's new deal: no scenario where Chase gets traded, released, or has his role reduced to save money. He's Cincinnati's WR1 on a long-term contract, in an offense built to feature him, playing next to a franchise quarterback the team has publicly committed to keeping.

Tee Higgins remains a talented complementary receiver in that offense, but the target hierarchy in Cincinnati isn't ambiguous. Higgins missed real time in 2025 — a pair of concussions in November and December kept him out multiple weeks — and Chase still led the league in targets regardless of who else was on the field. That's the clearest sign of how the Bengals' passing game is actually built: through Chase first, with everything else secondary.

Where he stacks up against the field

Chase's 9,717 DVS is the top score at the position, but the margin is thin now: Amon-Ra St. Brown sits right behind him at 9,627, and CeeDee Lamb at 9,624. None of them have matched Chase's peak season, and none carry his combination of target volume, contract security, and quarterback continuity all at once. Drake London, Justin Jefferson, and Puka Nacua make up the next group, all with real upside but all carrying more offensive uncertainty around them than Chase does.

Wide receiver is the deepest position in dynasty, and that depth usually means even the best players don't separate much from the field. Chase is the exception. His score isn't just the highest at the position — it's built on the fewest question marks of anyone near the top of the board.

The bottom line

"Untouchable" isn't a real category in dynasty — every asset has a price if the offer is big enough. But Chase is as close as it gets. He just finished a down year that still ranked top-four at his position, he's signed through the prime of his career, and the one real variable holding him back last season is squarely fixed heading into 2026. If someone in your league is trying to buy low on Chase off last year's touchdown numbers, they're pricing in a decline that the target share and contract both argue against.

Model a trade for Chase on the Dynasty Trade Calculator — you'll need to overpay significantly to get a deal done, and that's exactly the point.