"They just raise the energy of the gym. Anybody else that's around," Wells says. "They raise the standard of what's happening around them. And it's like, okay, hey, these guys are working, so I need to be working my ass off too."
Chase walks in with the most big-play catches in the league during his career and peers notice.
"You feel it," Wells says. "You feel it. When you're that caliber of athlete, you definitely elevate the room. Nobody is star-struck. But you just take stuff seriously … He's extremely competitive with anybody that's in the room. And just curates the culture ... "
You have to take it seriously when you see the 6-foot, 205-pound Chase wrench about 300 pounds off the floor and power it to his chest a couple of times. Or thrash the squat machine for more than 400 pounds. Or reduce a tray of rice to smithereens with his hands to tighten the league's most reliable pair of vises.
"He's a unit, bro. He's just about faster than everybody else," Wells says. "He always tops out over 21, 22 miles an hour every time he's doing something from a speed emphasis. He's still strong as heck when it comes to our weight room work. He doesn't miss a beat with anything."
You can catch some whispers in the Bengals' weight room these days that Chase has the kind of desire and DNA that would allow him to play until he's 40. As it is, if he repeats the second four years with the numbers from his first four years, he'll be the Bengals all-time receiver with 783 catches and 10,850 yards at age 28.
Throw in a ninth year with the same numbers and he'll have more than 12,000 yards before he's 30.
Six days a week now for Chase until he sees Boese in the Bengals' Kettering Health Performance Center. In between the time he preps and shuts the door to the hyperbaric chamber, it's three hours.
But it's always a different three hours.
"It's strategic. Recovery days are built in there," Wells says. "You have your speed days, you have your position work days, you have your functional movement and corrective exercise days. So it's not like you're just hammering for six days. But you're being instructed for six days on what we're going to do as a plan."
The plan has no scoops. Just front-page sense. Mo Wells has a textbook on his daily sheet.
"Now you make an example out of him," Wells says. "You're going to have some genetic capability. This isn't what happens when you work hard. This is what happens when you're a hard worker."