Jalen Ramsey has always been willing to share his opinion about a player, whether good or bad. He gives credit where it’s due, but he also lets opponents know when he doesn’t think very highly of them.
In the case of Amari Cooper, there’s no doubt about how Ramsey feels. He heaped praise on the Cowboys wideout ahead of their showdown on Sunday afternoon in Dallas, having faced Cooper once before in the NFL.
“In my opinion, I think he’s one of the most underrated receivers in the league,” Ramsey said in the locker room Thursday, via ESPN’s Lindsey Thiry. “And that comes off of experience. Like, if I haven’t played a guy I can’t say that but I played him my rookie year, and this is what I always say: Stats can lie to you. If you look at the stats of me versus him that game, he had one catch for 4 yards, so it looks like I won the matchup, right? But if you actually turn on the film and look at it, he was eating me up all game long – especially on the line with his releases. I was overly aggressive and he was really killing me at the line. It was just at the time basically picking on the corner on the other side.”
It’s certainly interesting that Ramsey still remembers exactly how many catches and yards Cooper had against him, but that doesn’t mean he thinks of that game as one of his better performances.
In fact, he thinks just the opposite. He always remembers that game for playing not as well as he would have liked.
“That’s something that’s always stuck in my mind. That stat line didn’t matter to me. How the actual game went mattered a lot to me,” he added. “And that’s when I gained a lot of respect for him. I was already a fan of him, of course, from college and then in the NFL – he had success in Oakland, but actually playing against him, I gained even more respect for him. And what he’s been able to do since he got to Dallas, it’s elite.”
Ramsey will most likely shadow Cooper on Sunday, but he’s not carrying over much from that game three years ago. He says “we’ve both evolved our games,” so he’s not looking back on that performance much at all.
