On Monday, the news was leaked that Jalen Ramsey had requested a trade out of Jacksonville. On Tuesday, he met with the media to discuss the situation. It went … poorly.
Ramsey was extremely honest and forthright about which questions he would and would not answer during the 15 minutes he stood in front of the Jaguars’ press core, which was a bit refreshing instead of receiving the same scripted response for every question he wasn’t going to answer like he was a member of the Patriots. But the Jaguars came off very poorly in their decision to put Ramsey out there, and it’s hard to understand what they expected by throwing Ramsey to the proverbial media wolves after such massive news drops.
Ramsey made it clear that he only cares about winning, punctuated with the rare “F-bomb” to media. He was also very quick to point out that he and his agent were not the ones to leak this news — which points a finger at Jacksonville’s upper management at the same time. Another revelation was that Ramsey had not spoken to head coach Doug Marrone about their exchange on the sideline Sunday.
He danced around the questions of why he wanted to be traded, at times just falling into silence and smiling in frustration at the media members that he was thrust out in front of. He knew expressing his true emotions would destroy his relationship with his teammates and perhaps cause an implosion, but for a guy like Ramsey, it’s hard to keep feelings under wraps.
Again, I don’t know what the Jags were thinking here. Frankly, they should be glad it didn’t get worse. Ramsey obviously did not want to be there, and everything could have easily gone off the rails if he decided to burn bridges then and there. He did not, but this remains a cataclysmic situation for the Jaguars. You can watch the full press conference below:
