Jordan Battle talked the talk and walked the walk on Sunday.
The Bengals safety became the first player with multiple interceptions in the same game for Cincinnati since Logan Wilson in 2023. He revealed the ball-patting tell for Miami passer Malik Willis, and that bold callout paid off.
Now, Battle addressed the performance after the game and did admit he couldn't see Willis's eyes on either of the interceptions, but he had the script all the same.
Battle finished with seven tackles, two picks and a 79.2 Pro Football Focus grade (third-best on Bengals defense).
"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.
Battle got the first pick off a deflection and the second one off a great read in the open field. It was a strong performance on the ball, but he can still clean up the tackling more.
The safety was the only Bengal to miss multiple tackles on PFF's grading following the game. He missed two of the Bengals' six missed tackles.
"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."
Something the whole team feels. There is no clear top team in the NFL right now, and the Bengals can be that, but they can't keep committing untimely mistakes as they have in the first third of the season.
"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 has a few days off before getting back together and working on the Ravens matchup in Week 7.
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