Big Dime: How Dax Hill, Jessie Bates, and Vonn Bell Fit Together on Bengals' Defense

Cincinnati's secondary should look a little different this season.

Author:
Mike Santagata
Publish date:
Aug 25, 2022 7:45 AM EDT

In this story:

Jessie Bates signed his franchise tag and is expected to play a full allotment of snaps in Week 1 against the Steelers.

The former second team All-Pro was holding out due to his contract, but is now back on the team and ready to go. While this is excellent news for the Bengals' defense, how will it impact Dax Hill?

The Bengals' first-round pick has looked like a stud in the preseason and you don’t want him to miss out on valuable reps during the regular season. He should be a positive contributor as a rookie. On the other hand, Bates and Vonn Bell have made up one of the best safety tandems in the NFL over the past two seasons.

Well, the answer could be more simple than it seems. Play all three.

The Three Safeties

The phrase “Three Safety Sets” has been said quite a bit when describing how the Bengals could utilize Bates, Bell, and Hill, but what does that really mean? It all starts with these players as individuals.

Bates is a smart safety who does his best work playing top-down and in the middle of the field.

While he’s not an extremely athletic, he plays fast because he’s decisive, intelligent, and confident. This precognition and play speed allows him to fly down from the post safety position to make a stop at the line of scrimmage. It also gives him the ability to range from the far hash all the way to the sideline to break up a pass.

He is best utilized as a deep defender that can sneak in and play some robber as well. He roams sideline to sideline like a true free safety on the defense. He’s at his weakest when it comes to getting in the box and defending the run just due to his size and issues tackling.

Bell is at his best in underneath zone coverage. As shown by the hit that ended Juju Smith-Schuster's TikTok career.

When he’s able to play close to the line of scrimmage and utilize his uncanny ability to create turnovers, he can become a hurricane of chaos. To go with this ability to be an agent of chaos, Bell blitzes and creates tackle-for-loss opportunities very well.

By keeping him close to the line of scrimmage, the Bengals are placing him in a position to truly change the game with turnovers and lost yardage. The issue for them has been that Bell is not the best in man coverage against talented tight ends. Yet he has been forced to play this role or as a deep safety more often than necessary because of coverage structure and trying to avoid putting linebackers in that position. Safeties in general are just more equipped to deal with modern tight ends. Rather than allowing them to get open, defensive coordinators would prefer that they have to make contested catches.

Hill is a versatile chess piece who can play man to man coverage against anyone along the inside.

The Bengals are expecting to utilize Hill in this way as well. In the preseason, Hill has played plenty of snaps against tight ends and he has excelled. While he can also play over the top or underneath in zone coverage, he is best utilized as a Tyrann Mathieu type. He can play the slot/star position as the third safety on these sets. Similar to Bates, he’s not the type of player that excels within the box.

So with their skillset listed out individually, how should we expect the Bengals to deploy them in these big dime/3 safety packages?

Cover 1

When the chips are down and the Bengals need to play pass defense, their most common coverage shell has been Cover 1. On 3rd and 4th down with more than 5-yards to go, the Bengals played Cover 1 a little over 40% of the time according to Pro Football Focus. Cover 1 can come in various forms as well. Let’s take a look at three general Cover 1 ideas.

There is your traditional Cover 1 hole with a linebacker taking the low hole, one safety playing man coverage on the tight end, and the other safety playing deep. In the Bengals nickel package, this would have Bell covering the tight end, Bates deep, and Logan Wilson in the hole. That puts Bell in a spot he that he excel in.

The next variation on Cover 1 is known as 1 robber/lurk. This variation has the linebacker playing man coverage on the tight end while one of the safeties plays the low hole. The Bengals nickel grouping would have Wilson in coverage against a tight end, Bell in the hole, and Bates deep.

The last variation to take a look at is Cover 1 with a 5 man rush. Now one linebacker is on a blitz while one safety plays man coverage on the tight end. As always with cover 1 there is also a deep middle-of-the-field defender. For the Bengals, this would be Wilson blitzing with Bell in man coverage.

These are not the only variations on cover 1, but they provide a blueprint for what the Bengals' cover 1 could look like from their 3 safety defense.

Putting It All Together

Let’s look at some of possibilities on how coach Anarumo could maximize everyone’s skillset while staying in his most commonly called coverage.

Bates is at his best playing top-down from a deep zone. He is best utilized as the deep middle of the field defender. This allows him to roam sideline to sideline and utilize his intelligence.

Bell optimally would function as the low hole defender in this coverage so that he can try to create havoc on the field without being constrained to playing man to man defense.

Hill is the premiere man coverage defender for this tandem which places him on the tight end in man to man coverage.

It would look something like this:

This variation of Cover 1 robber/lurk puts Hill on the tight end or “Y,” Bell as the hook/hole defender, and Bates as the deep middle of the field defender. Hill gets to show off his man coverage chops, Bell gets to create chaos, and Bates can play the entire field top-down. It’s pretty similar to what they were doing with Tre Flowers in the dime spot last season.

This coverage allows them to start pre-snap in a two high look which can create some confusion for the offense. It’s hard to tell that this will be Cover 1, because it has a rounded contour pre-snap with the two safeties about level with each other. The safeties would “spin” post snap. Bell would drop into the hole to rob any crossing routes and to protect the sticks while Bates would rotate to the deep middle of the field.

There are still issues with the coverage, as there are any coverage. For example: both corners are on an island on the outside for the most part. Bates is very rangy so that limits this issue somewhat, but these guys can still get beat and they shouldn’t expect Bates to save them.

Of course, this is not the only coverage that the Bengals would run or even the only variation of Cover 1 that they would run from a big dime look, however, I do think that this specific look puts all of their players in the best spot to succeed.

The Bengals could also give that two high look pre-snap and then stay in two high to play 2-man.

While this moves Bell to a deep half, it still allows Bates to play top down and Hill to play man coverage. It’s a fantastic change-up that will look fairly similar pre-snap to the Cover 1 robber look. Two-man is one of the best calls when it comes to stopping a passing offense because of the tight man to man coverage underneath with two safeties deep.

These ideas are just scratching the surface of the Bengals’ future big dime package. This is just a peak at some of the coverage possibilities without getting into the front at all. There are a plethora of other coverage shells, creepers, and blitz options from this package as well, but let’s save some of that for when it’s implemented this season.

While the Bengals were above average last season in their 6DB/dime usage, I expect them to get into this personnel grouping more often. Hill is going to force their hand to put him on the field on passing downs.

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