Jordan Battle made his point on Sunday.
After sparking attention with his comments about Miami passer Malik Willis, the Bengals safety backed it up with one of the best games of his Cincinnati career. Battle became the first Bengals player with multiple interceptions in the same game since Logan Wilson in 2023, finishing with seven tackles, two picks and a 79.2 Pro Football Focus grade, which ranked third on the defense.
Battle said after the game that he still couldn’t see Willis’s eyes on either interception, but the read was there all the same. The first takeaway came on a deflection, and the second came on a sharp read in open space.
When asked about the reaction to his earlier comments, Battle brushed it off.
"That's just the media. You know, everybody's looking for the next story, and obviously it went big, went viral, and that's just part of football," Battle said about the patting comments.
His coverage work was the headline, but the tackling left something to clean up. Battle was the only Bengals defender charged with multiple missed tackles in PFF’s grading, and he was responsible for two of Cincinnati’s six misses.
Asked what comes next, Battle kept the focus on finishing games better.
"Yeah, pretty much like I feel like everybody's saying it, just finish," Battle said about what the team needs to do next. "Games like that got to be able to close them out.
I feel like even better than we did. Give up the late touchdown and the offense obviously getting the ball back as well.
So it's got to be better. But closing out, doing a better team effort late in games."
That message fits what the Bengals are dealing with as a team. Joe Burrow said the same thing after the win, pointing to mistakes that nearly turned the game into something else.
"We got to be smarter. We got to be smarter.
Two fumbles in the red zone. A couple of personal fouls that hurt us, hurt our field position, and gave them points on the board.
We got to be smarter," Joe Burrow said after the win.
Cincinnati now gets a few days off before turning its attention to Baltimore and a Week 7 matchup with the Ravens.
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