The Bengals Three-Way Slot Corner Competition Explained

John Sheeran discusses the competition for the Cincinnati Bengals starting slot cornerback job with Jalen Davis, Ja'Sir Taylor and Bralyn Lux all making their case.

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Video Transcript

There's only one battle for a starting job on the Cincinnati Bengals, and it just intensified during mandatory mini-camp.

I'm John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.

This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals throughout the 2026 off-season.

While a lot has changed about the Bengals defense entering 2026, there's one position that was left largely untouched, and that happens to be slot cornerback, nickelback, whatever you wanna call it, right?

The third cornerback on your starting nickel defense in the slot in between your two starters on the outside.

We know those two starters on the outside.

It's gonna be D.J.

Turner and Dax Hill.

They're not going anywhere, at least for this year.

They're up for contract extensions as well.

But all the focus right now in terms of who's gonna be out there on the field with them in week one in September, that is what they're figuring out right now.

And to be perfectly honest, I thought that this battle was mainly gonna be between two players, and of those two players, I thought that one was going to have a definitive advantage.

I thought there was gonna be some competition throughout the summer and into the pre-season, but at the end of the day, I was still expecting one of these names to come out victorious.

But now I'm not really sure, because there seems to be a third name that's firmly in the mix as well.

So let's go through all three names.

Let's go through some of their backgrounds, how they ended up in this spot right now, and why the Bengals are giving each of them a fair shot at starting on their defense.

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The incumbent starter here, and probably the favorite to win the job altogether, is Jalen Davis.

Now, Jalen Davis has been with the team going back to 2020.

I remember right before the Bengals played the Pittsburgh Steelers that season, the Bengals signed him to the practice squad.

He was in the NFL for, like, maybe one or two years.

He was an undrafted free agent coming out of Utah State, kind of like a no-name and just maybe someone to stick around for a year or two.

But Jalen Davis decided that the Bengals were gonna be his home, because the Bengals have kept him for the better part of Well, not the better part, all of this decade, on and off the practice squad, mostly on the practice squad, but he was the backup to Mike Hilton in the slot when Mike Hilton was at his peak in the early part of the decade.

And he finally made the roster a handful of years ago, but again, never really saw the field on defense.

He was really just a special teamer.

But whenever he would play in the pre-season, I was always kind of impressed.

He was always a very form, sure form tackler, and he was decent in coverage when he was targeted and, you know, given the chance to prove himself in that regard.

So I was always intrigued by his skill set on defense, but obviously if Jalen Davis is your unquestioned starter at slot cornerback, you probably need to look at some other options and alternatives to see if you can do a little bit better.

But again, I thought he was fine to keep in the building for an elongated period of time.

He's got experience, he's got knowledge with the system.

He's obviously played under both Bengals defensive coordinators, Lou Anarumo and now Al Golden.

He's got a lot of trust with Zac Taylor.

Zac Taylor, you know, commended him last year when he was elevated off the practice squad, and he started about, you know, a handful of games and played the majority of the final seven-week stretch after Cam Taylor-Britt went down and Dax Hill was moved to the outside.

And that's how, you know, Jalen Davis ended up, you know, playing a lot in the slot last year, and proving himself to be extended, earlier this off-season to become b- essentially the favorite to win this job right now.

And I think it is earned, because he genuinely did play really well towards the end of the season last year.

I thought he made a lot of great plays on the ball.

I think his tackling has always been good.

He's now 30 years old, but I think he's still a quality athlete that can definitely maintain himself at the position.

Consider me a fan of Jalen Davis.

I like that he's on the roster, and I like that he has a chance to start, but I do think a competition is warranted if he is your supposed best option and he's the guy with the most, you know, proven tape that you have on him at the position.

It was expected for the Bengals to sign a cornerback in free agency, and that cornerback ended up being Ja'Sir Taylor.

Ja'Sir Taylor was originally a draft pick, a late-round draft pick by the Los Angeles Chargers.

He was then traded to the New York Jets this past year.

Now he's on a one-year deal with the Cincinnati Bengals.

And honestly, like, the majority of his experience at cornerback has been in the slot.

It's where he played, his extended playing time during the 2023 and the 2024 seasons with the Chargers.

So he was signed to really push Jalen Davis for that starting job, and I think that was the intent when he signed, you know, before the draft.

And while Davis was the extension before free agency and Taylor was an addition in free agency several weeks after free agency began, and they were getting paid about the same, Taylor actually has more experience, more playing time in the slot than Davis has.

And Taylor's only been in the league for about four years.

So in terms of experience and tape, there's actually more to go off of with Taylor.

He just never really played in this defense, obviously.

But when he signed, even if it was just a one-year deal, it was putting Jalen Davis on notice that you're not g- just gonna have this spot be handed to you for week one.

You're gonna have to earn it, and Taylor, I believe, is still his best overall competition to get that spot again.

And just last week, during the last week of OTAs, we saw Taylor take reps at the slot with the starting defense, so that competition has already really begun.

But that's where I expected it to stop.

I expected it to just be two players competing for one starting job, albeit not the most important position on defense, but a position that can be exposed if the wrong player is there.

Obviously, we saw at the end of Mike Hilton's tenure here, when his athleticism started to decline, he started to get picked on.

We started r- to really notice that in the, the last AFC Championship game the Bengals were in, and Hilton's, you know, quality of play only deteriorated from there.

So you do need a competent player, someone that can man up with some of the, the, the shiftier, receivers that line up in the slot.

So that, that can't just be a nobody there, which is why the Bengals are right to have a competition here.

But again, I thought that it was just gonna be between these two.

But now there's a third name in the ring.

During the first mandatory mini-camp practice in which reporters were allowed, t- access to the actual practice itself, Braylon Lux was taking the starting reps with the starting defense in the slot, alongside D.J.

Turner and Josh Newton.

Now, why Josh Newton was out there on the outside is because Dax Hill was held out from participating in team drills.

According to SI's James Rapien, he fell down hard on his leg last week during OTAs, so he only participated in individual drills, which may have been the reason as to why Lux was on the field in the first place.

Maybe Newton would've been in the slot in this case, and instead he was on the outside, which allowed Lux to be, taking those reps and having that opportunity.

But I do think that there is a definite possibility that Lux is getting looks to potentially start in the slot.

Braylon Lux is by far the youngest of these three competitors.

He was an undrafted free agent signing of the Bengals last year out of Texas Tech.

Before he was at Texas Tech, he was at Fresno State, but he had the majority of his collegiate production at Texas Tech for the Red Raiders.

Very much built like a slot corner, about 5'10", 180 pounds, not the greatest athlete, not the longest arms, but he did show a lot of promise last year as a rookie in the preseason, which is why he was rightfully kept on the practice squad, and he was kept on the practice squad for the entire year, only to be elevated for the last two weeks of the regular season, in which he played 18 snaps in the slot.

There's promise with this guy.

Even if he's not the fastest in terms of straight-line speed, I like his fluidity, I like his ability to turn his hips, I like his ability to find the ball.

Again, there's, the opportunities here are, have been rather limited going back to the preseason and obviously, you know, limited sample size in the regular season, but I think the Bengals did like what they saw from Lux as a rookie, and he obviously developed on the practice squad during his rookie season.

And even if there is a level of trust that they have with Jalen Davis, and even if the fact that J- that Jahsheed Taylor is a veteran who they think can come in and play quality snaps immediately, I think it does speak a lot for Lux to have these opportunities to play with the rest of the starting defense, and shows how much he has grown in just one year of developing.

He's also got the number 21 jersey, so maybe that helps out a little bit.

Because the Bengals didn't really plan out a succession plan for Mike Hilton.

I think when they drafted Dax Hill back in 2022, there was a chance that potentially he could take over at slot cornerback because that was his natural position in college.

But even then, like Dax was drafted as a safety, Hilton was entering the prime of his career.

He was freshly in the prime of his career.

So that was, I guess, their best option if they were to move on from Mike Hilton earlier, in, you know, the duration of his contract, but Hilton played out his contract here and I think that was a decision the Bengals were confident in making at the time, and they didn't really think about what they were gonna do to replace him.

And it's not like they paid Mike Hilton pennies.

They paid him 6 million a year, so they made a real investment at that position, and they haven't done that since.

The cornerback that they just drafted, Dakario Davis, he's 6'4", 190 pounds.

If anything, he's gonna be maybe Trey Flowers as a rookie, but the majority of his snaps in his Bengals career are gonna be on the outside.

He's not a slot cornerback.

And that's how we get to days like Tuesday, when a second-year undrafted free agent is taking starting reps against Ja'Marr Chase of all people.

I must say, it is refreshing for the Bengals to have a starting battle that isn't along the offensive line.

We've seen far too many of those over the last decade.

It's nice that the, that the line has a sense of stability and continuity to it, and it's nice that the Bengals did address the vast majority of their defense aside from slot cornerback, right?

I mean, we knew if they weren't gonna draft a linebacker or sign a linebacker, we knew who the starters were gonna be there, right?

But now, it very much seems like the starting slot cornerback on this team could be any one of three names, and I think the winner is very much gonna have to earn it.

Like Jalen Davis, I still give the best odds of ending up with the job.

Jahsheed Taylor's overall experience gives him an edge in his regard, but Lux has the youth.

He's got probably better athleticism than the other two combined, and if he does end up proving himself with an equal shot, who's to say he doesn't win this job?

It'll be very interesting to see how they rotate these guys in and out during training camp.

Obviously, right now they're just, they just have helmets on.

There's, it's just seven-on-seven, 11-on-11, very, very rarely, but it's mainly just, you know, going up against air.

There's no contact involved, so it is still a bit tough to evaluate cornerbacks at this stage of the off-season, and it will be tough to give these guys a fair, you know, one-to-one-to-one, opportunity against each other in a three-way battle, but that's what the Bengals are setting themselves up to do.

And who knows?

Maybe none of them prove worthy of starting and the Bengals have to sign a guy to take that spot.

21 starters can definitely be written in Sharpie for the Cincinnati Bengals, but one of them, we'll just have to wait until September to find out.

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