Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle turned some heads this week with comments about Miami Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis.
Long story short, Battle told reporters that Willis taps the football before throwing. At the time, it seemed like he was revealing a “tell” about Willis’ game that the Bengals might use.
Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley, though, responded to questions about Battle’s comments this week and said it wasn’t a big deal.
"If there was something big, like he told us every time our left guard was in a 3-pt stance, we were running the ball, I'd be like, All right, we got to fix that,” Hafley said. “It’s a timing and rhythm thing with a lot of guys, and there’s a lot of them that do that, but any opponent that wants to share our tendencies
with us, we’ll take any time.”
Probably not a big deal, then, but it still struck as weird for Battle to comment on an upcoming opponent’s tendencies. He specifically called out being able to break on the ball when the tells happen.
Regardless, we’ll see how it impacts the game. Now that Battle has publicly told the Dolphins that they know about the tendency, maybe there will be more mind games than usual.
This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Dolphins coach responds to Jordan Battle's Malik Willis comments
