Bengals Plan to Franchise Tag Jessie Bates

Jessie Bates will be staying in Cincinnati. The Bengals are not letting the young, star safety go anywhere.

The Cincinnati Bengals plan to place the franchise tag on 25-year old safety, a person close to the situation told USA Today. 

The Bengals will use the franchise tag in order to begin negotiating with Bates on a long-term extension. The use of a franchise tag will allow the negotiations to be exclusively with the Bengals.

The franchise tag for safeties is expected to be somewhere around $13.5M for the 2022-23 season. Bates has previously said that he wants to stay with the team, but not under the franchise tag.

The former Wake Forest product was drafted in 2018 and has quickly proven himself as one of the top defensive backs in the league.

Bates was a part of the Cincinnati Bengals team in the 2021-22 season that went to the Super Bowl and lose to the Los Angeles Rams by a mere 3 points.

Cincinnati wants to keep Bates long-term and want him to be a central piece of their defense for years to come.

Both sides will now get to the negotiating table and look to get a deal done.