Jessie Bates trade gives Jacksonville exactly what they need

Legitimate shots at the Super Bowl don’t come around very often, so there was no way the Jaguars were going to let losing their starting free safety to a season-ending injury derail their season.

On Monday, they pulled off a surprising trade, sending the Falcons two picks in exchange for Jessie Bates while keeping their championship hopes alive.

The Jags are 6-2 after their absolute dismantling of the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday night, and having won 5 of their last six games go into a stretch of games where they play the lowly Tennessee Titans, who they’ve beaten four straight times, twice in three weeks.

But now their defense, which has had trouble locking down the deep end of the field, gets one of the better coverage safeties in the NFL in Bates and their team is suddenly even better than it was just a few days ago.

Jessie Bates brings the Jags the help they need

An informal polling of the Jaguars’ fan opinions on X reveals that most fans have noticed that the Jags defensive scheme had some holes in it, especially at the safety position. So while Eric Murray’s injury hurt the Jags, they are a better defense now with Bates taking over at free safety.

The Jags play zone coverage 75.3% of the time, ranking 5th in the NFL, according to Sharp Football. Within that zone, they play a lot of quarters coverage, which divides the deep field into 4 different coverage areas, with the safeties, usually, playing the seams.

But they also run a lot of Cover 3 out of the quarters look, meaning one of the two safeties will drop down into the box to either cover underneath or rush the quarterback. It’s a scheme that puts a lot of pressure on the safety position to be able to cover and be versatile.

Bates is one of the most versatile safeties in the league, but he excels in coverage as an absolute ball hawk. Over the last five years, Jessie Bates has 18 picks, fourth in the NFL.

“The playmaker that he is,” head coach Liam Coen responded when asked Monday why the Jags brought Bates into the fold. ¨So much impact on the game,¨ Coen said, reminiscing about facing Bates twice a year when Coen was the offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay.

¨Over the span of the season, and, obviously losing Eric Murray… the opportunity to get arguably a top-5 player at his position to continue to help us evolve and ascend was the whole point of it all.¨

Coen went on to mention Bates’s playmaking ability and how the team wanted someone who could “get their hands on the ball.”