Deacs in the NFL: Jessie Bates III
Covering the bases with the former Deacon who’s become one of the best safeties in the NFL — while remaining grounded enough to take out the trash
Jessie Bates III was a second-team All-Pro last season — his third since leaving Wake Forest. He was one of several players the Cincinnati Bengals used to unveil updated jerseys this spring. Moving into the final year of his rookie deal, Bates is set to receive an extension or be franchise-tagged next year.
Bates is becoming a big-time name in the NFL.
But when Theresa Trotter tells him to take the trash out, there’s no task too small for Bates.
Because when mom asks you to do something …
“It’s just like when you’re sitting around the house and the trashcan is full, my mom’s like, ‘Take the trash out,’” Bates said. “I’m like, ‘Oh. OK.’”
Bates has come into his own over the past three years. This spring has seen him become the Bengals’ NFL Players Association representative, of which there is one per team. In that spot, Bates led the charge to have one of the league’s youngest teams report for organized team activities (OTAs).
He’s garnered national attention as a standout safety in the NFL — though, just as is the case for how Bates views his performance, there’s room to grow in that category.
And Bates is in line, barring something unforeseen, to receive a hefty extension in the next year.
Through it all, Bates has remained grounded, humble and reserved — after all, there he was talking to a guy with a Substack a week ago — and learned to dodge some of the pitfalls of the NFL lifestyle that claims other young talents.
“I feel like I’m the older guy now. I feel like I need to start talking more and being more vocal,” Bates said. “That’s crazy, I know, because some rookies who just came in may be still older than me.
“Time is flying. It feels like yesterday I just played my first college game. It’s crazy.”
The crazier part might be that Bates hasn’t hit the five-year anniversary of that first college game — a team-high eight tackles in a 7-3 win against Tulane in 2016 — and he’s started every game in a three-year NFL career and led the Bengals in solo tackles (78) and interceptions (3) last year.
Talking numbers
In case it’s not clear, the No. 3 is a theme here. Three years for Bates at Wake Forest, three seasons in the NFL (so far), three interceptions each of those seasons. Obviously his name itself, Jessie Bates III, plays a factor here.
And you probably haven’t forgotten that Bates wore No. 3 as a Deacon.
Because of a rule change in the NFL, players aren’t as beholden to numbers in relation to their positions. In the past, safeties had only been permitted to wear a number between 20 and 49.
Now Bates could wear No. 3 for the Bengals after wearing No. 30 for his first three years. It’s something he tweeted about earlier this spring.
A change, unfortunately, is not in the cards.
“I don’t think our owner (Mike Brown) was going to let me,” Bates said. “I don’t want to cause any drama or anything, so I was just going to stick out with 30 this year.
“I could’ve been a drama queen and threw a fit and been like, ‘Please just give me No. 3.’ But I just, I don’t really care. Thirty is fine, I’ve kind of embraced it my first three years.”
Other than his on-field play and his foundation supporting single mothers in the Cincinnati area — for the past two seasons, Bates has hosted single mothers and their sons at a Bengals home game and taken them out for dinner afterward — Bates doesn’t do much to draw attention to himself.
Drama queen or not, though, Bates is on the verge of being paid like one of the top stars of the NFL.
Bates is in the final year of his rookie contract and is in line to get a significant raise from the $2.4 million he’s set to make this season. If the Bengals don’t sign him to an extension before next spring, they’ll either have to franchise tag him or watch Bates hit free agency.
Not that Bates is all that concerned with this stuff.
“I don’t really pay attention to it as much, especially (since) I made the flip over with my agent,” Bates said. “He’s done multiple deals where guys have been in the same situation as me and he’s gotten good deals out of it.”
Bates made the switch to David Mulugheta last spring. Mulugheta, according to Forbes, is the top agent in the NFL. Among the defensive backs he represents are Budda Baker and Jalen Ramsey.
Those good deals Bates referenced? Baker signed a four-year, $59 million deal ($33.1 million guaranteed) with the Cardinals in 2020. Ramsey signed a five-year, $100 million deal ($71.2 million guaranteed) with the Rams last year.
The closest and most-recent comparison when trying to calculate how much Bates will make on his next contract is looking at the deal the Denver Broncos gave Justin Simmons a few months ago. Simmons was named to the Pro Bowl over Bates last season, but wasn’t one of the five safeties named to the All-Pro team (Bates was on the second-team).
Simmons signed a four-year, $61 million deal ($35 million guaranteed) in March, making him the highest-paid safety in the NFL.
Simmons was going to be playing under the franchise tag for the second straight season before the deal was made. Under the tag, Simmons would have made about $13.73 million in the upcoming season.
The career arches of Simmons and Bates are comparable in a few ways. Both are from ACC schools, Simmons from Boston College; Bates from Wake Forest. Simmons was a third-round pick in 2016; Bates was a second-rounder in 2018. Simmons was a second-team All-Pro in 2019 and a Pro Bowler in 2020; Bates was a second-team All-Pro in 2020 and … well, we’ll see about the Pro Bowl this year.
But worth noting: Bates is three years younger than Simmons.
There’s also this: Bates wants to keep playing for the closest thing he had to a hometown team while growing up in Fort Wayne, Ind.
“Yeah, of course, of course,” Bates said when asked if he wants to stay in Cincinnati. “It’s three hours away from home, so my family is just always coming up. I’m very close to my family.
“Just being able to have the access to them will be very important to me.”
Plus, the nature of what Bates has been through in the past three seasons means he’s not keen on missing out on the Bengals turning around their on-field results.
A(nother) rebuild
For all of the individual success Bates has enjoyed, it gnaws at him that the Bengals have been one of the worst teams in the NFL for the past three seasons.
Cincinnati has finished last in the AFC North each of the last three seasons, with a combined record of 12-35-1. When we talked in Jan. 2020, Bates called the 2019 season the “most-frustrating” football season he’d ever been through.
While going from 2-14 to 4-11-1 is hardly the immediate remedy for that frustration, the direction of the franchise certainly has Bates encouraged.
“We’ve got like a whole new team this year, compared to my first couple of years,” Bates said. “There were some really good, older guys that played quality football, but they’d just been in the building for a long time.
“(Now) it’s like everybody has something to prove. … Everybody has that grit and I think that’s why we had everybody come back for the Phase III of the OTAs.”
Being part of a rebuild isn’t foreign territory for Bates.
Bates committed to Wake Forest on the heels of Dave Clawson’s first season as coach, when the Deacons went 3-9. Bates redshirted the next year (2015) when the Deacons had the same record.
And when Wake Forest’s streak of five bowl berths in a row began, Bates was a consensus freshman All-America selection with five interceptions.
Just as Bates could feel the direction of Wake Forest’s program shifting, that’s the feeling with the Bengals.
“It doesn’t happen overnight when you’re rebuilding your team,” Bates said. “Usually it takes a while for teams to get on the right track.”
And while it might seem like Bates is personally on the right track, he’s far from satisfied with his production.
Room to improve
Bates seemed to land on everybody’s list of biggest Pro Bowl snubs last year. Bengals coach Zac Taylor said after Pro Bowl rosters were announced that: “(Bates) is going to be a tremendous player in this league for a long, long time. He’s going to be in the Pro Bowl many, many years after this.”
Despite being ranked as the top safety in the NFL by Pro Football Focus for virtually the entire season, the AFC safeties were Minkah Fitzpatrick (Steelers), Tyrann Mathieu (Chiefs) and Simmons (Broncos).
Yes, Bates says, it stung that he didn’t make the Pro Bowl. But he walks the tightrope when it comes to acknowledging that disappointment and respecting the players picked in front of him.
“I could see if it was like, ‘Oh, he didn’t deserve it, I should be in there,’ type of thing,” Bates said. “But I think all of the guys who made the Pro Bowl … they deserve it more than anything.”
And with that, Bates has left that in the rearview mirror.
There’s also this: Even with how well Bates has played and developed, he sees room for growth.
“I’m not even close to playing my best football or anything like that,” he said.
Not even close?
That takes some explaining.
Bates spent most of his first two seasons with the Bengals playing in the middle of the field, and playing deep. He was, in a matter of speaking, a centerfielder — which isn’t total coincidence, as that was Bates’ position in his baseball days.
Last season saw Bates’ game expand, though, to include some blitzes and snaps close to the box and line of scrimmage. He was credited with the first two tackles for loss of his career.
Bates relishes the chance to show his versatility in defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo’s system.
“I feel like I need to do more. More being around the football and being instinctive. I feel like (those are) the strengths of my game,” Bates said. “I feel like there are things that people say my weaknesses are because I haven’t really been able to show that I can be versatile, stuff like that, on a consistent basis, because I’ve always been in the middle of the field.”
The lifestyle
Bates declared for the NFL draft on Jan. 5, 2018, about a month and a half before he could legally buy an alcoholic drink.
Now 24, Bates refers to himself as an older guy in the NFL.
With that comes a certain level of understanding of how to be successful — and what not to do — in the NFL.
“It’s just crazy Conor, nobody thinks about it, but the lifestyle I feel like is the biggest thing that people struggle with, having (to) adjust with going into the NFL,” Bates said. “Because I mean, we’ve got the season for about five or four months, and then after that you just have all of this free time and you have money in your pocket for the first time.
“These guys, they hang around with guys who have been in the league for 10-plus years and think they can do the same exact thing, and that’s how people go broke.”
Bates said there wasn’t any one specific purchase from his rookie year that he regrets, but it was rather learning the lesson that getting into the NFL didn’t mean he could immediately live the lifestyle of a veteran.
“So I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned in my first four years, being able to flip my mindset and look at myself — look at my rookie self — and be like, ‘What were you doing? You need to relax,’” Bates says with a laugh.
This is where it’s helped Bates that he’s so close to his family, both in distance and spiritually.
“I love being around my family, I love going to my mom’s house and taking out the trash,” Bates said. “I think people kind of lose where they come from because of the whole lifestyle.
“I think a lot of people don’t have a lot of people like that in their circle, where they’re doing things to keep them grounded and being able to balance their life.”
With everything seemingly trending upward for Bates and the Bengals, there remains one thing he’ll never be too big for.
Bates is still going to be taking out the trash for his mom.
This is the fourth of several planned features on former Wake Forest players in the NFL. It’s part of an overarching goal to keep the content coming on Wake Up throughout the summer months, without live coverage of games and with little breaking news.
Great stuff, Conor. Sounds like a great guy. I'm glad he listens to his mom....
You are the best Conor. Jessie makes me so proud to be a Deac!!!