New Chart Reveals Best Value Safety Options for Bengals in 2026 Free Agency

Cincinnati may be heading a different direction at this position.

Nov 16, 2025; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Steelers running back Kaleb Johnson (20) stiff arms Cincinnati Bengals safety Geno Stone (22) during the second half at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images | Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

CINCINNATI — The Bengals may be in the market for a new safety to pair with Jordan Battle this fall after a tumultuous two seasons with Geno Stone as his running mate. ESPN's Ben Baby cooked up an interesting chart this week comparing the coverage stats for 2026 free agent safeties and their average salary per season.

Like most scatter plots similar to this one, the best value options are located in the top right corner of the plot, where the x-axis is the success rate allowed and the y-axis is the expected points added per target.

The top free agent options for the Bengals on this chart include names like Chiefs safety Bryan Cook, Browns safety Rayshawn Jenkins, Patriots safety Jaylinn Hawkins, and Browns safety Ronnie Hickman.

All four players were firmly in the top-right quadrant mix that could be the best option pool to pick from starting on March 9. Stone isn't miles away from the top quadrant, but he did fail to crack that portion of the chart.

Stone's position could be one of a few starting defensive spots with new names.

"Yeah, I don't know that I can give an exact number without giving away any plans," Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said about adding new defensive starters from free agency. "We hope to develop some starters from within. I'm not eliminating anybody that's on our current team in developing because that happens, and I'm very hopeful that it happens. But we have a number of positions that are going to be open. We're going to increase the competition on this team in every way we can, and we're going to bring in guys from within this team. It might even be practice squad players that are re-signed now, but we're going to increase the competition on this team because we have to."

Check out the full graphic from Baby below:

Here's how this year's free agent safety class fared in coverage this year (min. 150 snaps). Average salary per year is represented by the size of each respective point. pic.twitter.com/SYkEOtUtZn

— Ben Baby (@Ben_Baby) February 11, 2026

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