Jessie Bates III
Atlanta FalconsModel Score
How good he is at what he is supposed to be doing, out of 100. Not a projection of what he will do next, and not a read on his contract. Median is about 70, and a 95 is rare. How it is built →
Season Stats · 17 games
Draft & College
He went about where consensus had him.
Covers the college seasons in our data, which does not always reach back to a player's first year.
Comps
STM Take
Super Bowl LVI appearance plus 2023 1st-team All-Pro plus three straight tier 1 finishes (#6, #8, #5) in 2023-2025 establishes Bates as one of the elite safeties of his generation. The Wake Forest ACC 2nd-round origin plus the Atlanta chapter give him real career foundation. The 2026 question is whether Bates earns his third Pro Bowl plus holds tier 1 territory or whether the elite chapter continues climbing toward DPOY territory.
Bates came out of Wake Forest as the Cincinnati Bengals' 2nd-round pick (54th overall) in 2018 and played in Super Bowl LVI with the Bengals. He earned 2023 1st-team All-Pro plus two Pro Bowls (2023, 2024). His STTM career runs tier 7 (#56) in 2021, tier 5 (#34) in 2022, tier 1 (#6) in 2023, tier 1 (#8) in 2024, and tier 1 (#5) in 2025.
Strengths
- Two Pro Bowls (2023, 2024) plus 2023 1st-team All-Pro plus three straight tier 1 STTM finishes establishes top-5 S career résumé.
- Wake Forest ACC 2nd-round origin plus eight years of NFL elite production gives him real veteran market value.
Concerns
- Atlanta's broader defensive identity around the Walker-Pearce double-1st-round investment compresses the structural support around Bates.
- Multi-year elite-pace workload plus the 2018 draft class age puts the late-2020s structural decline question on every 2028+ projection.
What to watch: Whether Bates earns his third Pro Bowl in 2026 plus holds tier 1 (top 10), the threshold for confirming the structural ceiling continues.