ORCHARD PARK — Christian Benford claims God speaks to him.
He wasn’t supposed to jump to snatch Joe Burrow’s pass on his game-changing pick-six against the Cincinnati Bengals; leaving your feet in the face of a player with the ball is cardinal sin. Benford claims God told him to leap.
Benford’s faith has become his public identity since signing a four-year, $69 million contract with the Buffalo Bills during the offseason. He speaks about God in every interview he conducts, leaving it up to the listener to decide what they believe.
Whether or not you buy Benford’s faith, he believes it. And it helped get him to a place where he’s one of the NFL’s hottest defensive players.
“God doesn’t give me what I want,” Benford told GNN Sports. “God only gives me what I need.”
What Benford needs as a cornerback is to have a short memory because there’s no time to gloat or feel sorry. Last year Bills coach Sean McDermott approached Benford about playing more man-to-man coverage on an opponent’s top receiver.
Benford, a 2022 sixth-round pick from FCS Villanova, has always been viewed as a prototypical cornerback for Buffalo’s zone-heavy defense. But over the last year, Benford has shown he can step out and do more than expected.
In the last two weeks alone, Benford has matched up with Pittsburgh’s DK Metcalf and Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase — perhaps the best receiver in football — and hasn’t allowed a catch on three targets. Twenty-six times Benford was matched up with those players and didn’t give up anything.
“The maturation process for him has been to compartmentalize just his subset of the game and what it is that is his world, taking away all the fluff — what the nickel’s doing, what the safety’s doing and really just honing in and turning it into a one-on-one,” Bills cornerbacks coach Jahmile Addae said. “When he does that, I think he puts himself into a more competitive moment. It’s me against you.”
Addae tells the Bills cornerbacks that when they are in man coverage, they need to treat it like a one-on-one drill and assume the ball is coming. That’s where the short memory comes in, especially for Benford, who is covering the NFL’s top receivers.
Facing a player like Chase, the odds of him catching it are often 50-50 if the ball is on target no matter how tight the coverage is. That means Benford has to live with giving up a catch on occasion and knowing he’s eventually going to get beat.
“Very seldom do you see somebody running freely away from (Benford),” Addae said. “Everything is a contested catch. I could see the thought maybe being that he didn’t play as well early. Sometimes the cookie crumbles that way, but he’s been tight in terms of coverage for the majority of the year.”
Bills veteran Tre’Davious White was in Benford’s spot before injuries hampered his career and he says cornerbacks need Armadillo skin. White acknowledged needing some time to find it and that’s what Benford has needed to do to take on his current role.
“You understand you’re not perfect,” Benford said. “Some games might go your way, some games might not. You’ve got to know every game that it’s going to you. You’ve got to face that challenge. … When you’re playing the No. 1, you’re bound to get the ball going to you.”
The NFL is a zone league and the Bills only play man 22.3% of the time, according to Sharp Football Analysis. And the Cleveland Browns are the No. 1 man coverage team in the league, but do so just 45.3% of the time, the only team above 40%.
But the ability to play man coverage on occasion frees up the defense to be more creative, to take more risks. Good man coverage can allow defenses to blitz more often or commit more defenders into the box to stop the run.
The Bills blitz 21.1% of the time, 22nd in the league. But Benford has made four huge plays on corner blitzes the last two weeks, including on both of his touchdowns.
“A big part of playing in our defense is corners that are tough and corners that’ll tackle,” McDermott said. “If you’re going to blitz the corners, they better be able to tackle. … It’s a chapter of our defense and some people won’t blitz their corners for whatever reason.”
Benford (toe) wore a soft medical shoe on his left foot after practice after going through warm-ups and individual drills during the media availability Thursday. He was listed as a limited participant on the injury report
Benford got X-rays following Sunday’s game on an undisclosed body part and was not listed on the injury report Wednesday.
NOTES: QB Mitchell Trubisky (illness) did not practice Thursday. … LB Terrel Bernard (elbow), DE Joey Bosa (hamstring/wrist), OT Spencer Brown (shoulder) and WR Joshua Palmer (ankle) were limited.