Kansas football flashback: What if Ja’Marr Chase never decommitted from the Jayhawks?

Ja’Marr Chase threw shots at Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes in a recent interview, but did you know he was once committed to Kansas football?

The 2020s have begun as a successful decade for Kansas City sports fans, with the Jayhawks winning a national title in 2022 and the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl in 2023. A player with ties to both is making headlines in the media, though not in the ways one might expect.

When reporters asked Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase who the best player in the NFL is, he responded without hesitation: Joe Burrow. Despite Burrow himself saying that Super Bowl LVII MVP Patrick Mahomes deserves that honor, Chase threw in a disrespectful quip by saying: “Pat who?” to which Mahomes responded with this epic comeback on Twitter.

The remark stirred up many feelings on social media, especially because a heated rivalry between the Bengals and the Chiefs already exists. Both teams have eliminated each other from the NFL Playoffs in the past two AFC Championship games, but it was the Chiefs who came out on top in the big game. Needless to say, both quarterbacks are among the best in the league, and Mahomes might be one of the best to ever step on an NFL field.

READ: KU football’s 3 easiest games of the 2023 season

Burrow was Chase’s teammate at LSU, and the two won a national championship back in 2020. They were one of the best quarterback-wide receiver tandems in college football history, with Burrow winning the Heisman Trophy and Chase winning the Fred Biletnikoff Award. However, despite his petty comments about Mahomes, Chase was once connected to a Kansas football team.

Back in 2017, he committed to the Jayhawks, who were being coached by David Beaty at the time. It only took him eight days to back out of his verbal once he got better offers on the table, and he even went through the same process with the Florida Gators.

When Chase announced he would attend Kansas, he was hardly a top-300 player in his class. He finished as the 247 Sports No. 19 player in the country and the best prospect out of Louisiana.

It’s hard to fathom a scenario where Chase skyrocketed to a 5-star recruit and stayed with Kansas considering how poor their program was performing at the time. However, had he graduated from KU, it’s very unlikely that he’d be throwing shots at the most loved person in Kansas City, because that wouldn’t bode well with anybody in the area.

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