Ja'Marr Chase of the Cincinnati Bengals spit on Jalen Ramsey of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not because he'd taken a swig of water to flush his mouth and then turned to the side and, oops, oh Gosh, sorry, some of that got on the other guy, yikes. Also not because he was talking animatedly and a spray of spittle flew from his mouth and onto someone in front of him, which has happened to me, from both ends, and in either case is so powerfully awkward that even death could not relieve the embarrassment. Chase was standing six or eight inches from Ramsey, and facing him, and then he loaded up a loogie and hocked it directly onto Ramsey's shirt. They don't tell you this in school, but the dry-mouthed intentional spit, just compositionally, stands out for being particularly slimy and vile, consolidated as it is from the stagnating goo under the spitter's tongue and from between their teeth. Even if you did not understand the intentional spitting as an overt provocation, you would be right to recoil and to howl and possibly even to retch noisily and sob at the sheer unpleasantness of the substance itself.
The spitting happened during a break in the action. The Bengals—awful, inept, going nowhere—had just run the ball on third down and picked up zero yards; Chase had attempted a crack-back block on Ramsey, and the two scuffled briefly, and had been handed offsetting unsportsmanlike penalties. They continued to yap back and forth while a field attendant approached with a bottle of water. Chase suddenly spit, without otherwise flinching and without any evident warning, seeming to catch even Ramsey entirely by surprise. The referees didn't see this spitting, so that when Ramsey reacted by first grabbing and then punching Chase, all the referees witnessed was a guy in a Steelers jersey being violent. Ramsey was flagged a second time and was ejected for the punch, while Chase was allowed to continue playing.
Chase evidently took this to mean that he'd gotten away with it. "I ain't ever opened my mouth to that guy," Chase told reporters after the game, which the Bengals lost, 34–12. "He don't like some of the words I told him. We've been going back and forth the whole time, so I'm sure something got under his skin ... I ain't spit on nobody."
Ramsey, meanwhile, was adamant. "He spit on me," said a calmed Ramsey. "I'm always going to be all for trash-talking, shit-talking, stuff like that. I actually enjoy that part of the game, I think people know that." Ramsey explained that after their first tussle, which involved shoving and jostling after Chase snatched Ramsey's mouthpiece, the referees warned them to cool it. "Next play, same shit, we was talking shit, which I'm cool with. But as soon as he spit, it was 'fuck that.' I ain't gonna tolerate that part of it."
A classic he-said he-said situation, except that Austin Briski of Fox 19 Cincinnati caught zoomed field-level footage of the exchange, which shows a remarkably clear view of Chase spitting on Ramsey.
Briski shared a cleaned-up and slowed-down replay of this clip on his personal Twitter account, leaving no reasonable doubt about which of these two men is being truthful.
Obviously it is crazy to consider the dignity of actions a person takes to avoid the consequences of having spit onto another person. Still, I would like to note the theft of valor of claiming to have accomplished via smack-talk alone what was in fact achieved by hocking a disgusting slimy loogie onto your adversary. Shit-talking is an ancient art with a lineage of distinguished masters, many of whom would've counted it among their proudest achievements to have provoked an opponent into a violent outburst with nothing but well-chosen words. Resorting to spitting on someone is worse than cheating at this contest; it's losing the contest, lashing out, and then claiming both the victory and the moral high ground. Being caught on video at this act of profound loserdom ought to strand Chase on the throne of busterdom for the entire rest of his time in football.
Ian Rapoport reported Sunday that the NFL is investigating the incident. Jalen Carter of the Eagles was fined and suspended a game for spitting on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott at the very beginning of the 2025 Kickoff Game, back in September. Carter's suspension was later rescinded because he functionally missed that entire game after being ejected before he could participate in a single play. The NFL is not likely to throw down extra punishment for Chase's disgraceful attempted hijacking of honor and acclaim in trash-talking; Chase therefore should expect to miss Cincinnati's next game, and to pay a modest fine. His reputation as an honorable smack-talker, meanwhile, has suffered a career-ending injury.
