Heck of a football player, heck of a leader, heck of a man!
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Jalen Ramseyhas requested more time.
He’s onto something, inching closer to the answer to a question he didn’t realize he had. He’s grabbed ahold of part of it; the rest flutters just out of reach above him.
He is also about to be late for practice, so he stands from the too-small chair from which he has spoken for the last hour and fifteen minutes. His knees pop softly as he gets to his feet. Behind the balaclava he started wearing in Jacksonville, and which he still wears years later in Los Angeles, Ramsey’s eyes are wide and searching, sorting the thoughts he’s left hanging in the air as he leaves the room.
He will find them again later. He can’t forget a detail. It’s a gift, but also a trait the 27-year-old Ramsey has learned can sour quickly if he doesn’t consciously funnel it into the right spaces. He thinks sequentially in the field of play — and in life. Each moment, each encounter, is studied and processed, and then the next moment is built upon that understanding, almost as if Ramsey is creating sets of stairs that take him from one space to the next. He wants to know where the stairs lead.
So he walks up to a Rams public relations official who is standing several feet away, and asks him, unprompted and unplanned, to put a second interview on his schedule.
There is more to find.
It’s the opening of our first interview, and Ramsey has not paused for several minutes while answering a question about where his mind is now as opposed to this time a few years ago.
The inference is obvious. The Rams are preparing to play Jacksonville the following Sunday.
Ramsey sought a trade from the Jaguars (the team that drafted him No. 5 overall in 2016) ahead of the October 2019 deadline. In a move that ultimately signaled a pivotal change in the Rams’ team-build model, Los Angeles sent Jacksonville two future first-round picks to get the two-time All-Pro.
Ramsey recites the escalating, frustrating moments and blow-ups that led to the trade, stacking each together: Coaches started talking about him in meetings as if he’d give up a few catches to whichever elite receiver he’d draw that week. It made him feel taken for granted and underestimated, but he figured that was unintentional. Then, after a bad game in 2018, trade rumors circulated via a prominent NFLreporter. Ramsey believed the rumors were leaked by the Jaguars and went on to play one of the best games of his career, picking off two passes while covering Pittsburgh’s Antonio Brown.
That was the first game he wore the balaclava, in 90-degree weather, when Ramsey’s mouth was covered but so much seethed from his eyes.
“That was the first time where I was like, ‘Wow, maybe they don’t value me,” says Ramsey. “They’re asking me to go guard A.B., so I know my value for sure. But maybe they don’t respect it.’”
He pushed, sometimes publicly, against the rigid, regressive and management-first environment overseen by Jaguars vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin — whose tenure in Jacksonville ultimately drew public chastisements from the NFLPA and led to Coughlin’s firing. And after not getting a long-term contract extension the following summer — Jacksonville chose instead to pick up the fifth-year option on his rookie deal — Ramsey arrived at training camp in 2019 via Brinks truck, a viral moment he says was a publicity stunt pitched to him by a marketing partner.
Ramsey’s face falls when he remembers what those years did to his teammates and friends. “Guys were not enjoying coming to work, genuinely,” he says. “They were not enjoying coming to work, and we play football for a living, so that is so insane.”
“I genuinely believe that the journey along the way shapes who you are in the present and who you will be in the future.” (Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
Growing tension burst in Week 2 after Ramsey’s in-game imploration for then-head coach Doug Marrone to throw a challenge flag. Ramsey was sure a ball had been dropped by Texans star receiver DeAndre Hopkins, and the two got into a public, heated argument on the sideline.
In hindsight Ramsey says it wasn’t about the challenge — it was about what the flag represented, a lack of belief in him. It was like any other competitive discussion, he says, adding that he let it go after the game. But then, Tony Khan, Jacksonville’s co-owner/director of football analytics, called him into his office for a conversation with himself and owner Shad Khan, Tony’s father.
“I’d been cool with Tony and his dad since I got drafted,” says Ramsey. “As soon as I walked in there, it wasn’t just he and his dad. It was him, his dad, (general manager) Dave Caldwell and Tom Coughlin. ‘OK, you didn’t tell me that (they) were in here, because you know we don’t really get along.’”
According to Ramsey, he was asked to apologize to Marrone, which Ramsey felt was unnecessary (nor did he feel Marrone needed to apologize to him). Eventually, the conversation escalated into open hostility from Caldwell, which drew a smirk from Ramsey. He says Caldwell cursed at him and slammed the door behind him as Ramsey left the office.
As he walked down the hallway, Ramsey called his agent and asked him to put together a trade request.
As Ramsey talks through those moments, he gets to the root of his unhappiness at that time: He did not feel valued by the people who controlled his environment, his future. He felt as though Jaguars leadership under Coughlin simply asked players to fall in line, regardless of their individual talents — and regardless of how those talents might help the team win.
Ramsey believes his development into the kind of cornerstone player he is now in Los Angeles was ruled out without consideration. But he doesn’t believe he could be that person now without first experiencing the falling out with the Jaguars.
“I’m super grateful for Jacksonville,” he says. “A lot of people don’t know that. They think I maybe hate Jacksonville, despise Jacksonville. I’m actually super grateful, super thankful for that part of my journey.
“I’m a huge believer in journeys, whether it’s highs, lows, whatever it may be. I genuinely believe that the journey along the way shapes who you are in the present and who you will be in the future. I try never to erase (my experiences) along the way.”
Ramsey was traded to Los Angeles exactly one month after the sideline confrontation with Marrone. One of his first meetings after the trade was with former Rams cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant, now the defensive backs coach for the Lions. In five days Ramsey would be tasked with covering Julio Jones, but Pleasant didn’t start with football. The two talked for hours about everything else instead. After that, Pleasant knew how hard Ramsey could be pushed. He also realized how badly Ramsey wanted it.
Ramsey could be difficult to coach, Pleasant believed, but not because he didn’t understand things or argued or because he assumed he had all the answers and didn’t have to listen to anybody. Ramsey certainly did often have the correct answers before other players — and sometimes coaches, too. In the past, that made certain coaches distance themselves from him.
But Pleasant recognized Ramsey just inherently wanted more to do. He craved being around people who could teach him new things. “I am challenging,” says Ramsey, smiling, “especially mentally. I like to surround myself with people who also challenge me, who want to debate, so I can see things differently.”
For Pleasant and the rest of the Rams defensive staff, the word “challenge” did not carry a negative connotation.
“I think the people who have struggled or had any issues coaching him in the past (did) because of a failure to understand,” says assistant secondary coach Jonathan Cooley. “He gives you all of the answers to the test. You just have to listen. He is such an intuitive person, such a smart guy that he pays attention to everything. Nothing goes over his head.
“You can’t cheat people who are always paying attention,” Cooley continues. “You don’t need to tell him things just to tell him things to feel like you’re coaching … (and) you have to be an open-minded coach.”
The Rams recognized that as NFL offenses modernized to become more multiple, it became exponentially easier for quarterbacks to avoid Ramsey if he were simply matched to one outside receiver through the entirety of a game. Now, Ramsey is the Rams’ “Star,” a role in which he can still align on the outside, but also moves inside and along the line of scrimmage based on matchups and game plan. Ramsey aligns in five defensive positions — outside corner, slot corner, box player, safety and defensive lineman/edge. In that movement, the Rams have made Ramsey a nearly-unavoidable player.
Through 15 active games, Ramsey is the Rams’ most-targeted defensive back (92 targets), but allows a passer rating of just 67.5 and has three interceptions. His position versatility means he’s the only player in the NFL who has at least 15 pass breakups and also five tackles-for-loss (he has 15 PBUs and 8 TFLs). Ramsey also is fifth in tackles among Rams players (73, a career-high). He’s a Pro-Bowler for the fifth time; he should be a three-time All-Pro by February.
The “Star” position is not new, nor is it unique to the Rams. But the possibilities for its evolution and development within the Rams defense is designed to be unique to Ramsey. Former Rams defensive coordinator and current Chargers head coach Brandon Staley, who along with Cooley and Pleasant first began to brainstorm the position with Ramsey in 2020, wanted to make him the center of a solar system around which other players orbited depending on his place on the field.
From the personnel department to the coaching staff to the defensive scheme itself, the Rams made it clear to Ramsey that they wanted to rebuild their entire secondary around him. That was a language he was not accustomed to hearing. Ramsey felt valued, but he also didn’t miss the challenge posed: He was expected to grow.
“That’s when you get the best out of him,” Cooley says. “When he doesn’t feel like he’s challenged, that’s when he’s not his best self.”
“I see that people gravitate toward me or will follow my lead. I always try to at least be aware of that.” (Joe Nicholson / USA Today)
During the 2020 offseason, with the Rams’ practice facilities shut down, Staley, Pleasant, Cooley and Ramsey texted or FaceTimed every day, bonding over scheme and analysis — and in the case of Staley and Pleasant, the young families they were building.
In Ramsey, the defensive coaches found a collaborative mind who also tested them. They found that he learns best by listening, that sometimes his eyes aren’t on the film during study sessions because he can better see what is unfolding on the field in his head by hearing it described.
This offseason, Ramsey’s coaches learned that he holds pickup basketball games at the court in his Hidden Hills, Calif., backyard. All players are invited — offense, defense, special teams, draft picks, undrafted free agents — and the games can get heated. A sociology major while at Florida State, Ramsey uses the games as “a little experiment” to study his teammates, to see how they move and work leverages and space, how they respond in competition.
“He’s got great intuition,” head coach Sean McVay told The Athletic this week. “You can see, man, he really works at studying the game. … (He wants) to know what the best way to operate and be at the optimal performing levels, or what the most efficient way is.”
“I want to try to win,” Ramsey says. “I’m always trying to figure out how to learn people, try to be able to encourage them and challenge them to bring their best self out for the greater goal.”
Coaches discovered that Ramsey liked to meet separately with them early in the week, immediately after that game’s plan had been installed, so he could adopt the plan’s language in order to better communicate it to the rest of the secondary. They found that when Ramsey asks “Why?” — as he so often does — he wants to know more, but also wants to study how the person answers the question.
“He’s very competitive. I think he’s so smart that he doesn’t just go along with, like, ‘Hey this is what Coach said,’” says secondary coach Ejiro Evero. “It’s always from a place of intelligence and understanding, like, ‘Hey Coach, why are we doing that?’ It’s always just because he knows football, and there’s not always a clear-cut way to do things. His mind works to all of the different options.”
With his Rams coaches, Ramsey has found technical engagement, personal development and even friendship. They pick at him some days, and they can sometimes argue. But as they challenged Ramsey to do more, they also challenged him to be more.
“I do realize that I’m a natural leader, even when I’m not trying to be leading or don’t think I’m in a leading moment,” says Ramsey. “I see that people gravitate toward me or will follow my lead. I always try to at least be aware of that.”
“He is the temperature,” says Cooley.
But temperatures fluctuate.
Because Ramsey asked for a trade, because he is one of the NFL’s most notorious shit-talkers, because he gave that now-infamous quarterback-trashing interview with GQ magazine in 2018, because he can break up a pass and then pantomime rocking a baby as he walks away, because he has called out QBs and coordinators for motioning receivers away from him at the line of scrimmage, because he’s had visible outbursts on the sideline — or in his own huddle, because he can lay a hit on a ball-carrier that leaves blood hanging in the air then get up in that player’s facemask as he peels himself off the grass, because football is heroes and villains and no space for anything in between, because, because, because …
There are many who love to hate Ramsey. And even if they don’t hate him, they love to talk about him. On more than one occasion, Ramsey has walked off a practice field only to pick up his phone and realize he’s gone viral on Twitter, for better or for worse.
Ramsey embraces the chatter, good and bad, but only to a point. His Twitter replies are turned off, but he does still wear the balaclava — sanctioning at least the on-field “villainy” it represents. Yet off the field, Ramsey in 2020 pledged a $1 million donation to Purpose Preparatory Academy, a K-4 school for underprivileged kids. This year, he partnered with The Athlete’s Corner to donate thousands of meals to Los Angeles-area food banks on a per-game basis.
It took two years for anybody to reveal that, on Fridays during the season, Ramsey treats the entire Rams roster, staff and support workers (including the equipment managers) to a huge delivery order of fast food, for the aptly-named “Fast Food Fridays.”
“I never cared about the perception of me to people who did not know me,” he says. “I expect that from the outside world. … They see something from me, and that’s who I am to them.
“But the people who I’m around — the people who I love, give my joy and all of that to — know better. That was a moment for me, now we’re good. Challenge me. I’m going to grow from that; just be with me along this journey.”
“If I’m being 100 percent honest, my daughters have helped me so much in my growth.” (Michael Conroy / AP Photo)
Is he happy now? Yes, Ramsey says, but then he wonders what that really means, whether it’s even the correct word.
“More important than happiness, to me, is love and joy,” he says, after a moment. “Joy, I feel like that’s who you really are. Happiness can come and go. Joy is a vibe, an aura. I could be filled with joy, but still have happy moments, sad moments, bad moments…
“I believe in feeling all of your feelings,” he later says.
Ramsey is the first to admit he can be mercurial, sometimes thunderously so. On bad days, he says, his mom will know his mood just from an emoji when they’re texting and knows to give him some space. He still has outbursts when mistakes are made or things go wrong schematically, and those do draw scrutiny — “He’s with you when you’re right,” defensive coordinator Raheem Morris says. But coaches and teammates say his navigation through those moments has changed.
This year, Ramsey and Evero got into a heated conversation on the sideline after a bad defensive series. The two texted back and forth that night and greeted each other happily the next day. “Before, a lot of times (Jalen) could get frustrated and shut down because he would see something that wasn’t right,” says Evero. “He would have a valid point, but instead of addressing it, he’d be like ‘Fuck this.’ Shut down. But now, even when he gets frustrated with something he is talking through it. That maturity is awesome.”
Against Baltimore on Sunday, Ramsey struck Rams safety Taylor Rapp’s helmet with an open hand in the defensive huddle after a clear miscommunication between the two on the previous play led to a tense exchange. After the game, McVay compared the altercation to a fight between two brothers and added that the group was able to talk through the situation as the game continued before squashing it and moving on.
“I think some of the most uncomfortable interactions I’ve had are with people that I’m truly comfortable to be real with, and then our ability to move on is what makes it special,” McVay says. “Sometimes I think it’s healthy to be real with each other.”
Last summer, Ramsey snuck in extra goal-line coverage reps against then-rookie receiver Van Jefferson, the Rams’ second-round pick that spring. Again and again they moved and counter-moved, noting releases and eyes and hip movements and shoulders, jamming hands and initiating tough contact. It looked intense — more intense than camp interactions usually are — but later, Jefferson said it was Ramsey’s idea to pull him aside and challenge him to study his technique while adjusting his own.
Teammates note Ramsey extending himself in other ways. In training camp this offseason, Ramsey spent extra time in the film room with cornerback Brontae Harris, an undrafted free agent who was fighting to stick to the roster.
“He’s a bit misunderstood,” says second-year safety Jordan Fuller, a 2020 sixth-round pick who developed into an immediate starter. “He gives his all for his teammates, and we love that, but he treats people great. … Even before training camp (in 2020) he showed so much love to me, and it wasn’t even guaranteed that I would make the team.”
McVay shared that when it was time for players to pick captains this summer, Ramsey was elected for the first time by a near-unanimous vote. “I hold that in high regard when you let these players vote for their captains and what that says about the respect these guys have garnered,” McVay says, “I think one of the things that I’ve really learned from being around Jalen is that he really cares about the people he’s around. I don’t think people would ever really know. He does it behind the scenes.”
In the end, Ramsey simply hopes he’s considered as an entire person, because that’s how he tries to see others — beyond their singular moments. His three daughters — Breelyn (3), Brooklyn (2) and Joon, or “Joonie,” (1) — taught him that.
“If I’m being 100 percent honest, my daughters have helped me so much in my growth,” Ramsey says. “As a player, a professional, a leader, everything, just because of the way our dynamic, our relationship is.”
Ramsey writes their names on the three stripes of his cleats before every practice and game. And he has enforced a rule: Whenever he disciplines one of his daughters or has to get stern with them for any reason, they will always exchange a kiss afterward.
“I have to make sure that they know, ‘OK, Daddy is mad at this situation or this incident, but he still loves me. I still feel that love from him, I still feel that joy from him. He’s just not happy with this instance,’” says Ramsey. “That is super, super important for me with my daughters, that they genuinely feel that.
“I think those moments have to stay where they are. I’m a believer in that. Maybe that’s why I’m an ultra-confident corner. My position is like that. If I get beat on a play, that was a moment. That’s how I think of it in my head. That ain’t gonna stop me from this next moment, though, playing free and happy and loving what I’m doing. That’s how I am with everything in my life.”
At the end of our first interview, the clock on Ramsey’s phone alerts him that it’s past time for him to get out to practice. But he’s realized something important, how a situation shaped him on a level he didn’t previously consider. It cannot be left unsaid, just tessellating through his consciousness unconcluded. The question has an answer.
Before he stands, he grabs it out of the air and builds it into a thought.
“I know I have had my moments,” he says. “I was a young kid, 20 years old (when he was drafted). I was being judged so harshly by people who knew me, who I felt like should have known me. I was going to have mistakes … I was going to go through my ups and downs, my bad moments, my good moments, my mistakes, and I just wanted the people who knew me to be like, ‘This moment isn’t you. And we know you, and we still love you, we value you.’ …
“It’s the same way with my daughters. I don’t think of my daughter in the one moment where she messes up. I don’t leave her there. I know who she is.”
Ramsey’s grandmother is a pastor, so he spent his early childhood Sundays in church all day long. As a pre-teen, he preferred to spend Sundays with his father, Lamont, who instead of routinely attending church with the family worked out with and coached Ramsey, his brother and other friends and peers in the gym built out of their garage near Brentwood, Tenn. They’d catch NFL games on television afterward; Ramsey loved picturing his own pro football career while they watched.
But as Ramsey’s innate curiosity grew and his questions got bigger — even bigger than football — he moved back toward his faith. For a while, his dad stayed in the garage.
Throughout high school, and then through college, Ramsey gravitated toward friendships where faith was openly discussed, debated and explored. While at Florida State, Ramsey became close friends with current Chargers defensive backs Derwin James and Trey Marshall. Marshall’s mom lived close by, and sometimes they’d all hang on the couch as she quoted scripture while cooking dinner.
When Ramsey left for college, his dad started going back to church. Was it because Lamont missed him, and wanted to feel closer to him by digging deeper into something Ramsey made such a large part of his life?
Ramsey needs to know the answer. And he needs to know now.
So he reaches for the phone he’s kept under his chair this entire time, our second interview, and FaceTimes his dad to ask. The two talk for a few moments about his parents’ divorce, Ramsey’s faith and his dad’s journey toward his own. Ramsey realizes something important. He has to share it.
“I’m proud of you. I never told you that before,” he says.
His hand shakes slightly as he hangs up the phone. It’s quiet for a moment. The recorder is running. The time has gone over again
