Jalen Ramsey’s trash talking comes back to bite him again
Jalen Ramsey doesn’t discriminate when it comes to trash talking. In his three years in the league, Ramsey has gone after just about everybody, especially quarterbacks — from Eli Manning to Ben Roethlisberger to Joe Flacco.
But his favorite target might be Buffalo Bills rookie Josh Allen, a player he referred to as “trash” in the offseason. And on Sunday, when the two faced off for the first time, Ramsey ate his words like a five-course meal.
Allen was far from perfect in the Bills 24-21 victory — he finished 8 for 19 with 160 yards and a TD — but he played well enough to hand Ramsey’s Jaguars their seventh-straight loss. Nearly half of his passing yardage came when Robert Foster burned the Jags’ secondary for a 75-yard touchdown catch, but Allen also added 99 yards and a score on the ground.
“He did enough to get their team the win,” Ramsey said of Allen after the game. “I don’t really know the stats. I know he ran the ball really well. He hurt us with his feet. Passing, it didn’t really feel like a lot of opportunities. We have to watch the film. They did have one deep one on us early that hurt us in the first quarter.
“Other than that he was causing damage with his feet.”
Ramsey, who was an All-Pro in 2017 while leading his team to the AFC Championship game, turned heads in August in an explosive GQ interview. At one point, he was scrolling through a list of player names on his phone, commenting on everyone he saw.
But he saved some of his most scathing criticism for Allen.
“I think Allen is trash,” he said of the Wyoming product. “I don’t care what nobody say. He’s trash. And it’s gonna show too. That’s a stupid draft pick to me. We play them this year, and I’m excited as hell. I hope he’s their starting quarterback.”
Ramsey got his wish. The result was perhaps not what he was imagining.
The GQ interview was not the extent of Ramsey’s chirping. In May, the Bills tweeted out a video of Allen’s first snaps in Buffalo’s minicamp. Ramsey quoted the tweet with the caption, “That’s a pick waiting to happen.”
After the Bills’ victory, they screengrabbed Ramsey’s words, saying “This tweet didn’t age well.”
Ramsey didn’t exactly change his tune after the game. When asked if he still thinks Allen is “trash,” Ramsey said, “I stick to my opinions, usually.”
Allen took the high road and mostly let his play do the talking.
“I just want to win football games,” Allen said after the game. “There was a lot of trash talking before and after. But ultimately, my job is to go out there and help this team win football games. I did a good enough job of that tonight with the help of my team.”
