Bates Overrated?

[CJD]

Honestly, it's impossible to underrate or overrate a safety just by watching the games. You need to go into the All 22 and watch the player and see what he does that affects the play.

For example, there was a play against the Deshaun Watson led Browns where there was a guy coming wide open over the middle on a crosser. It may have been a busted coverage. We can't really say without knowing the play call (which we don't know). Jessie Bates saw him coming open and tracked the player from the outer hash mark all the way to the sideline to pick off the ball.

https://www.bengals.com/video/jessie-bates-iii-highlights-int-bengals-browns-week-14-2022-season

Was that his responsibility? We don't know for sure, but it may not have been considering he was resting on the far hash mark. It looks like it may have been cover 3, and the corner on that side of the field was pulled away by a post route.

Now, most QBs see Bates moving over and probably choose not to throw that ball. We only saw that play because Watson is bad and/or rusty and threw it even when it was clear Bates had closed that window.

The question is, how many of those windows did Bates cross the entire field to close? If Bates weren't the safety on those plays, would we have given up a bunch more 30+ yard passes?

It's hard to quantify just by watching the games on TV.

I haven't watched a lot of All 22 film because that just takes way too much time, but from the little I've seen, Bates does seem like he's generally extremely alert in the field and is regularly covering up potential holes that would develop if a less aware player was at safety.

I'm worried about whether Dax will have that awareness right out of the gate. We may be looking at a lot more deep balls given up in 2023.

But we'll just have to see.