DALLAS _ The one guy at Paycor Stadium who can tell you how tough it is to win the league’s receiving Triple Crown is Troy Walters, the Bengals wide receivers coach who backed up five Pro Football Hall of Famers in an NFL career that took up the first eight seasons of this century.

Cris Carter, Randy Moss, Marvin Harrison, Larry Fitzgerald, and Calvin Johnson. They never did it. Only Steve Smith Sr. and Cooper Kupp have in the 21^st century and now Walters finds himself shepherding Ja’Marr Chase through the latest bid that swings through here Monday night (8:15-Cincinnati’s Channel 9) and an appointment with a spoiler alert in Cowboys All-Pro CeeDee Lamb.

“It’s hard to be the No.1 in any of those categories, let alone three of them,” says Walters of touchdowns, catches, and yards. “That’s a truly amazing season.”

Now officially hard. After Sunday’s games rattled to a stop, Raiders rookie tight end Brock Bowers extended his league lead in catches to 87, eight more than Chase and Lamb, both locked with 79 grabs each. Off a Thursday night outing, Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown slipped into second place with 81 while Garrett Wilson’s seven catches for 114 yards Sunday gave him 81. Travis Kelce, Malik Nabers, and Trey McBride all now have 80.

Still, Chase’s 13 touchdowns look to be safely in the lead for another week, as do his 1, 142 yards.

And he knows very well he goes into Monday tied with Lamb because “It means a lot.”

The playoffs get harder and harder to reach, but Chase adamantly insists the only thing he’s thinking about these days is “making memories with these guys.” He certainly has made some for his newest teammate. Rookie wide receiver Isaiah Williams, younger than Walters’ first season in the league with the Vikings’ Carter and Moss, just arrived in town last month off the waiver wire and he’s enjoying this glimpse of history.

“He’s a dude. When I just saw him run a dig, I said, ‘That’s probably the fastest feet I’ve ever seen in my life when I first saw it in person,” Williams says. “When you see it on TV, you don’t see the aftermath. You don’t see the detail in the route running. All the stuff that makes a receiver great. He’s special and he’s a leader. He’s a guy I look up to. I watch everything he does. He’s a special football player.”

The Bengals knew that when they took Chase with the fifth pick in 2021, but what head coach Zac Taylor didn’t know is the kid had a football mind that swallows any X and O.

“Overall football intelligence, that is an impossible thing to predict when you get a player. And that has just shown up countless times,” Taylor says. “Like how much he’s able to handle, how much he’s able to help other people. He’s making corrections, sometimes in the walkthrough from across to the other side to a younger player. And that’s the stuff you don’t take for granted when a guy’s able to operate on a level like that. And I certainly don’t take that for granted.”

Never has it been more evident than this season, when he suddenly went from a classic X outside receiver to a slippery savant taking about half his snaps in a brand-new position in the slot after usually going through a dizzying series of motions. Asked what’s the smartest thing he’s ever seen him do on the field, Taylor spoke of a recent moment in practice. It sounds like the same incident Williams recalls as he recounted how Chase is helping him pick up the offense.

“One of my first practices, the second week, I’m getting thrown in and I’m saying to Ja’Marr, ‘What do I got?”‘ Williams says of Chase’s grasp of the whole picture. “He’s motioning all the way to the other side of the field. He’s not even thinking about just, ‘You got this.’ That’s just helping me a lot.”

Ask Walters about the smartest thing he’s seen Chase do and there’s silence. There is more than one. Asked the same thing, quarterback Joe Burrow, who got Chase hooked on watching film in college, prefers to just look at what he’s done this year.

“From basically being an outside receiver for his entire career, to all the pre-snap movement, putting him in the slot, putting him in different positions running different routes and that requires a nuance that in the slot he had probably never done before,” Burrow says. “And he really has excelled at it. He continued to get better and better reading the coverages, learning the spots to sit down, and just watching his progression as a receiver this year has been impressive.”

Not only is Chase, a three-time Pro Bowler in a race with Lamb, another three-timer, he could be matching wits with the NFL’s most prolific cornerbacks combo in Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland. If Chase leads the NFL with the most touchdown catches of at least 50 yards since he came into the league in 2021, then Diggs comes in with a league-best 17 interceptions in that same stretch and Bland has the second most interceptions since 2022 with 14.

They’ve yet to play together this season. Bland is just back from a foot injury that took him out until two weeks ago and Diggs hurt his knee three weeks ago and is a game-time decision after going limited in practice all week.

Chase may be trying to make memories. But he’s got his opposition staked out.

“Two great, outstanding corners,” Chase says. “One led the league one year and the other almost did.”

And he knows all about Lamb, too. Lamb got last season what Chase wants this season and has written it down his famous sicky-note on his mirror:

An All-Pro berth.

“CeeDee is versatile, too,” Chase says. “He started off in the slot in college. A little more shiftier …I like how shifty he is … I’m not competing against them. I’m competing against myself.”

Chase also knows that Cowboys defensive coordinator, old friend Mike Zimmer, was the head coach of the Vikings in his first NFL game. The one where he provided foreshadowing worthy of a classic novel with five catches for 101 yards and a 50-yard touchdown that began the flurry of 50-plus scores.

“I’m sure they won’t play the same way. Completely different,” says Chase of the man-to-man he scalded in that long-ago opener. “Probably be more two-high (zone). They’ve got a great defense over there. They probably trust their players to make one-on-one plays. I’m sure he trusts his players.”

Zimmer, who began coordinating NFL defenses the year Walters was drafted, is the first to know that Chase isn’t the same player from that September to Remember.

“He’s watching more tape,” Walters says. “He understands how to watch tape, and not watch just plays, but watch different guys. Watch schemes and what they’re trying to do.”

Chase will tell you he wasn’t always this aware of the game and its intricacies. He has to go all the way back to his sophomore year at LSU against Florida to recall his first true film session, courtesy of the cerebral Ohio State transfer named Burrow.

“I just got around the right people to put me in positions and teach me those positions,” Chase says. “Joe actually was one of the first people to sit me down and watch film. I learned a lot of from him in college and with Joe Brady being my coach there, those two guys together really helped my intelligence … I started to watch defenders and DBs and how they move. Start from there.”

Walters is still trying to think about the smartest thing he’s seen Chase do. Because there have been many, he wants to make sure he picks out the right one. But he can tell you why he’s had to be so smart this year. Last year, 49 of his targets came in the slot, per Pro Football Focus. This year he’s already at 46 with five games to play.

“He’s learning multiple different positions, and then within each position, each place where you line up, the coverage changes,” Walters says. “On the outside, you have to beat the corner. On the inside, you’ve got to beat a nickel and a linebacker. If you’re the No. 3, you’ve to beat a nickel, a middle linebacker, and a safety. Everything changes as you move around, and he’s done a great job understanding coverages, what they’re trying to do, what we’re trying to do by putting him in different places and that’s why he’s excelled.”

Burrow doesn’t make too much about that first film session. It seems like Chase didn’t need much prodding.

“You see him. He’s Ja’Marr,” Burrow says.

“He might say give me a play, but he’s going to go full speed 100-percent-game rep so we can bank that rep for the game. He’s been that way since we were together in college. He wants to get that full speed game rep,” Burrow says. “That’s how you have to do it if you want to be great. If you run it like a game in practice, you get to the game you already have a rep in that situation. I know how fast he is going to run, and I can put the ball where I need to and judge his speed because I have seen it so many times in practice now that once we get to the game his full speed is not different. That’s just him day in and day out.”

When it comes to a play where he had to use sheer brainpower more than talent, Chase can’t single them out.

“I feel like I do that every game now. Now that I’m moving around more, I have to think more,” Chase says. “I feel like I do that every game.”

Walters can’t single out his smartest play, but one thing he has in common with Hall-of-Famers, Walters says, is taking very few plays off and making the most of his chances. Lamb led the league in targets coming into Sunday, per PFF, while Chase was fourth. In the last three games, Chase has played at least 94% of the snaps. He’s taken all but 30 snaps this season.

“All the elite guys I played with took care of their bodies. They didn’t come out of games,” Walters says. “He doesn’t need breaks much. He’s like that in practice. He can go the whole practice. Never has any issues with hamstrings or soft-tissue muscle injuries. In the game, he might come out one or two snaps. He’ll play the majority of the game. He’s special in that regard, too.”

Walters just can’t pick out one of his smartest plays. OK, there’s the famous “Retro,” call from the last series in Baltimore last month when he broke out for 21 yards down the sideline on a play that set up his own touchdown to cut the lead to one, and put the Bengals in position to win in the last minute.

“We had not repped it. It was not in the game plan,” Walters says. “But, no, I’ve got to think.”

Too many to exalt one.

“Next question,” Walters says.

What about that face-to-face with Lamb on Monday night?

“I’m in my own lane,” Chase says. “It’s not a race, but a marathon.”