Jalen Ramsey is a season and a half removed from playing for the Rams.
But the Miami Dolphins star cornerback’s influence still runs through a Rams defense that adopted many of the three-time All-Pro’s traits.
Four Rams defensive backs were Ramsey’s teammates in 2021, when the Rams won Super Bowl LVI. And rookie starters in the secondary and defensive line said they have studied Ramsey since he played at Florida State.
Rams coach Sean McVay, quarterback Matthew Stafford and Rams receivers will get a close-up look at Ramsey on Monday night when the Rams play the Dolphins at SoFi Stadium.
“You see a lot of the same things that made him such a fun guy to watch do his thing here,” McVay said. “Hopefully, that won’t be the case on Monday night.”
Ramsey, 30, is the NFL’s top-paid cornerback, a status he first achieved with the Rams.
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At the 2019 trade deadline, the Rams sent two first-round draft picks and a fourth-round pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars for Ramsey, the fifth player chosen in the 2016 draft.
Before the 2020 season, the Rams gave Ramsey a five-year, $120-million extension, and he helped them reach the NFC divisional round. The next season, they won the Super Bowl.
But in March 2023, after suffering the worst Super Bowl hangover in NFL history, the Rams began a financial pullback necessitated by their spending to build the championship roster. Ramsey was traded to the Dolphins for a third-round pick and tight end Hunter Long.
“There were a lot of tough decisions that were on the horizon for us as a football team, and it didn’t have anything to do with us not wanting him here,” McVay said. “There were a lot of things that we had to do as a result of some previous years and things of that nature. He understood that.”
In 10 games last season, Ramsey intercepted three passes. In September, he signed another extension that once again made him the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback, with an average salary of $24.1 million per season. In last week’s 30-27 defeat to the Buffalo Bills, he displayed his athleticism by intercepting a pass that bounced off a receiver’s chest near the end zone.
On Saturday, Ramsey told reporters in Miami that the move from Jacksonville to the Rams could not have worked out better.
“At a time when I stopped liking football as much, then I got traded to L.A, it just drastically changed everything for me,” Ramsey said. “It’s amazing, just my whole L.A. experience. I literally have nothing bad to say about L.A. or my time in L.A. at all.”
Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula was the team’s outside linebackers coach in 2019 when the Rams acquired Ramsey.
The Rams were preparing for a game against the Atlanta Falcons, who featured star receiver Julio Jones. Ramsey walked into the Rams building and proclaimed, “I got Julio,” Shula recalled.
“All right,” Shula thought, “We got a good one.”
Ramsey shut down Jones and established himself on a defense led by star defensive lineman Aaron Donald. In 2020, Brandon Staley replaced Wade Phillips as defensive coordinator and deployed Ramsey from all angles and positions.
Aubrey Pleasant, the Rams assistant head coach, was the team’s defensive backs coach in 2019 and 2020. If Ramsey did not get enough reps in practice as the season went on, he occasionally inserted himself onto the scout team, Pleasant said.
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“He would give the offense the most incredible look that you could ever imagine, and then go play safety — and look incredible at that spot,” Pleasant said. “It indirectly showed his teammates how much he really loved the game, and it also showed how much of an unbelievable athlete he really was.”
In 2021, despite opponents avoiding his side of the field, Ramsey intercepted four passes and helped lead the Rams to victory in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.
Before the Rams traded Ramsey to the Dolphins, he had played alongside and/or mentored current Rams cornerbacks Darious Williams, Cobie Durant and Derion Kendrick and safeties Quentin Lake and John Johnson III.
“He just always brought that energy, brought that passion, brought that fire,” Williams said. “It kind of made you want to play with the same energy, for sure.
“But, I mean, more than that, it’s just keeping up with that competitiveness that he brings.”
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Lake, a rookie in 2022, said Ramsey was physical and cerebral. He understood how offensive coordinators attacked defenses and individual players.
Lake said one lesson from Ramsey stood out.
“He said there are guys that are going to make plays, guys that are going to capitalize on their opportunity when it comes,” Lake said. “But there are also guys where it might not be a play that’s made but it might be a tone that’s set.
“It might be you just absolutely blow up a crack block, or absolutely hit the running back with a good hit. That’s a tone-setting play, and the energy that’s created, it carries on through the defense and it carries through the whole team.
“He said, ‘Who are going to be those guys … that are going to make plays? But if you’re not that guy, who’s going to set the tone?‘”
Jared Verse, the No. 19 pick in this year’s draft, is an edge rusher but said he came of age as a brazen chatterbox on the field by listening to Ramsey in mic’d up moments. Rookie safety Jaylen McCollough said he was watching Ramsey “when he was wearing [No.] 13,” as a freshman at Florida State.
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“He’s just one of the best all-around,” said McCollough, who has four interceptions. “His mindset, his technique, his approach to the game. … Guys that always kind of find the ball. Real-deal football players.”
Rams receivers are embracing the challenge of playing against Ramsey.
Cooper Kupp, who sharpened his skills practicing against him, described him as “a unicorn” of a football player.
“The physicality and the urgency that he plays with, it makes you meet him there,” Kupp said. “You can’t hesitate at all.”
Second-year receiver Puka Nacua said Ramsey was a smart player with “the physicality that you build a Madden corner with.”
Stafford can attest to that.
“It still jumps off the tape,” he said of Ramsey’s skills. “Some of the plays that he makes down the field, tracking the football, blitzing the quarterback, batting balls down or whatever it is, he’s still got all the tools.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
