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Cincinnati Bengals Film Breakdown: What Jordan Battle Adds to Defense

Will the second-year safety have a bigger role moving forward after playing a season-high 14 snaps against the Giants?

Mike Santagata

Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle (27) during the first day of training camp at the Kettering Health Practice Fields outside of Paycor Stadium on Wednesday, July 24, 2024.
Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle (27) during the first day of training camp at the Kettering Health Practice Fields outside of Paycor Stadium on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. / Phil Didion/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK
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Jordan Battle played a season-high 14 defensive snaps in the Bengals' win over the Giants.

The second-year safety played well. A majority of his impact was felt in run support as he made three different stops on designed rush attempts. He also got involved with a scramble and making a tackle after a catch. That’s a heck of a lot of production in only 14 snaps.

Let’s look into it a little bit deeper and see how Battle fared on film:

Run Support

The Bengals had their best game defensively on Sunday night and that all started with their ability to defend the run. The overall stats don’t look spectacular because of Daniel Jones, but when it came to the running backs, they did their job. They gave up a 35% success rate and 3.15 yards per carry to the Giants' running backs. This comes a week after the Seahawks gave up 6.2 yards per carry on running back carries in their loss to New York. There are a few reasons for this with the return of Sheldon Rankins and Mike Hilton factoring in quite a bit, but the added snaps for Battle were also important in this game.

When Battle was on the field, running back runs had a 25% success rate and averaged 2.75 yards per carry. It’s a small sample size with only four attempts, but Battle also made the stop on three of those plays. It certainly appears as if Battle made an impact on the run game. Let’s look into his plays to see what was happening:

This is the first snap of Battle’s day and it’s one that earned him more snaps in this game. The wide receiver to his side is assigned with blocking him and he makes that receiver miss entirely before stopping this run. This is exactly what a safety needs to do when they’re in the box. Beat or slip the block from the receiver and go make a tackle.

His next snap came on the next play. He’s once again playing in the box and works across the line and through traffic to be involved in this stop. He’s not the most important defender to make this play work, that would be Logan Wilson against the pulling guard, but he’s still providing quality support to bring the ball carrier down quickly.

This is the third time he’s been involved in the tackle in the run game. Similar to the last play you can see him work through traffic, keep his eyes on the ball carrier and make the stop. He’s unblocked on the play so he needs to make the tackle. He looks to be a quality player against the run when lined up in the box.

Pass Coverage

There weren’t really enough snaps in pass coverage to make a declaration about Battle’s performance. If you rely on his tape from this season in pass coverage, then you’re probably not optimistic because of what happened to him in the Ravens game. If you’re relying more on his 2023 film against the pass, then you may be encouraged because he was a solid coverage player last season. Still there were a couple plays to take a look at in this game.

The Bengals are running a 3 weak buzz coverage here with Battle as the weak hook. This coverage is nice against intermediate routes because Battle gets to play them from depth. Generally it’s an answer against crossing routes from the passing strength, but there are none on this play. He is responsible for the vertical route from No. 2 to his side and gets in that window. I think a small criticism is just that he doesn’t close quick enough on the checkdown.

Battle doesn’t take a great angle on his initial steps toward it and has to adjust as well. If he was just a little faster to the back here he might be able to bring him down short of the first down but the checkdown to his side is also a decent answer because he’s coming from deep and had to hold his spot for the vertical route. 

Battle gets to play post safety in a 3 weak sky look. There are two outside vertical routes on this play so he needs to maintain his presence in the middle of the field. Once he reads Jones’ eyes and shoulders he starts to scoot that way and actually gets outside of the numbers on the throw. Generally the post safety should be able to play from numbers to numbers on the deep ball so it’s quality play to get outside of them here. The throw is even closer to the sideline than the numbers so he doesn’t have a chance to make a play on the ball. For what this play was, Battle did a solid job.

This is a snap of quarters coverage and the important thing to note here is that Battle and Cam Taylor-Britt communicate about their bracket on the receiver. You can see them both give the same hand signal to each other to signify the inside out bracket. This communication is important too because the receiver is working inside. Battle takes him across the field after he starts to run that way. The ball isn’t thrown at him but it’s nice to see him communicate with his fellow defensive backs since that was apparently the issue with him last season.

This was Battle’s last snap of the day and it came on a pressure look. This plays out as Cover 0 with Battle playing the first down marker. It’s a better job of reacting to the ball and getting downfield than the first play that was shown. None of these snaps really had a ton of importance on them for him as he was not really targeted in coverage.

It’s still a worthwhile endeavor to see if he’s performing his job and in the right spot which he was on every play. With his high quality run support, it would make sense if he saw the field more this week against the Browns. He’s not a liability in coverage and it seems as if he’s communicating well. The Bengals could use his athleticism and physicality in a game against Cleveland that is always a mud fight.

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Mike Santagata
MIKE SANTAGATA

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