Ranking Jalen Ramsey’s quarterback trash talk excerpts

Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey sounded off on many of the NFL’s quarterbacks, so let’s rank his trash talking.

There is no silencing Jalen Ramsey. Whether on the field or off it, the Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback has proven that he’s going to be heard. He’s established himself as one of the best corners in the NFL (if not the very best), and has more than his share of trash-talking soundbites to his credit already in his young career.

However, Wednesday may have brought about his best compilation of trash talk to date. Ramsey was the subject of an interview with GQ, which covered a wide array of topics. The most notable, perhaps, was the start as he went through most of the NFL’s quarterbacks and offered his honest thoughts on them.

There were some complimentary statements from the star cornerback, but plenty of trash talk being thrown out there as well. And really, it’s far more enjoyable to focus on the latter scenario than any pleasantries that were exchanged.

As such, we’re going to run through the quarterbacks that Ramsey seemed to throw a bit of shade at and rank the cornerback’s trash talk about them. Again, this isn’t a ranking of the players, but rather the trash talk that was thrown their way. Let’s get started.

Honorable Mention: Blake Bortles

Okay, so Ramsey didn’t actually talk any smack about his own quarterback, but he might as well have. He talked about “Playoff Blake” being good and the players wanting him to be entrusted with more by the coaches. But in the same vein, there’s the implication that “Playoff Blake” and the regular-season version are different entities, in addition to also basically saying that you can’t ask Bortles to do too much.

You can’t rank it because it’s wasn’t true trash talk about his own teammate. But it’s mildly humorous to see how he danced around addressing Bortles in the conversation.

8. Andrew Luck

What Ramsey had to say about Luck comes in last in our rankings because, frankly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. When the Indianapolis Colts quarterback has been on the field, he’s arguably made the most out of little talent around him than anyone. Yet the Jaguars cornerback doesn’t think he’s that good?

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If he were to have questioned Luck’s durability and how he’ll come back from the injury, that’d be one thing. But the criticism that he offers really doesn’t seem to hold much clout. Luckily, Ramsey had much better to offer.

7. Dak Prescott

This comes in next-to-last because, well, Ramsey seemed to not really be able to make up his mind regarding the Dallas Cowboys quarterback. He starts off by saying that Prescott is good, then continues to downgrade him with every subsequent sentence. Finally, he simply states that the Cowboys are Ezekiel Elliott’s team and not Prescott’s. Between the indecisiveness and the tired criticism of Dak, this can’t be high on our rankings.

6. Eli Manning

There honestly wasn’t a great deal said about Eli Manning on the part of Ramsey, but what he did say was pretty indicative of his thoughts. Not only did the corner explicitly state that he wouldn’t call Manning good, but he basically put all of the New York Giants’ signal-caller’s recent success on Odell Beckham Jr.’s shoulders rather than the quarterback himself.

This gets knocked for a lack of substance, but it’s not a horrible argument — especially after what Manning looked like the majority of the time with OBJ sidelined last season.

5. Matt Ryan

I had a lot of difficulty about where to put Matt Ryan in this ranking. On one hand, Ramsey has a point in what he’s saying. The Jags defensive back noted that Ryan’s performance dropped off a great deal after losing Kyle Shanahan as his offensive coordinator, and how that falls on the player. That’s not unfair to say in the slightest, and it’s a legitimate gripe about Ryan’s 2017 campaign.

At the same time though, I can’t fully get behind it when Ramsey asked what Ryan’s name was, but then proceeded to reel off knowledge about him. He knew that Ryan was the 2016 NFL MVP, knew about the drop-off from 2016 to 2017 and even knew about the change at coordinator. That bit of shade seemed forced, and moves it down this list.

4. Ben Roethlisberger

We’ve now reached the absolutely delightful trash talk portion of the programming — the ones where I audibly chuckled while reading what Ramsey had to say. That starts with Roethlisberger, who Ramsey and Jacksonville notably beat in the Divisional Round last season. Ramsey begins by saying that he’s “decent at best” before attributing a lot of Big Ben’s success to Antonio Brown. Then he dropped the hammer.

From the interview:

"He has a strong arm, but he ain’t all that. I played him twice last year, and he really disappointed me."

Ramsey talking about Roethlisberger the way a father talks about his child doing something really stupid is wonderful. “He really disappointed me” is low-key one of the most brutal insults that the corner could have thrown the way of a player even he admitted is a future Hall-of-Famer, and it’s hard not to love every bit of it.

3. Ryan Tannehill

Okay, so while I may not have liked the way that Ramsey presented his takes on Matt Ryan by not knowing who he was, I’m much more inclined to believe that he didn’t know Ryan Tannehill’s name. He says straight-up that he doesn’t know much about the Miami Dolphins quarterback, but adds that what he’s heard isn’t good. That’s not great in itself, but it does make you believe that Ramsey legitimately can’t even concern himself with learning Tannehill’s name, and that’s absolutely fantastic.

2. Joe Flacco

From the interview:

"And just being honest about it, [Joe] Flacco sucks. I played him two years in a row. He sucks."

There is so much to love about this. Ramsey went from talking about Lamar Jackson being a steal with the 32nd overall pick and could have transitioned to saying that Flacco wasn’t as good. Nope — he succinctly just said that the Baltimore Ravens quarterback was god-awful and that he had the experience to prove it. Somebody put this quote on a poster.

1. Josh Allen

Ramsey didn’t go in on any quarterback quite as hard as he did with Buffalo Bills rookie Josh Allen, so he’s an easy choice to top this list. Every word that the Jaguars star has to say is just piling it on Allen more. He calls him “trash” multiple times, says that the pick was “stupid,” notes that he’s excited to play the Bills if Allen is starting, runs down Allen’s lack of success against big teams in college and (most beautifully) notes the “hella interceptions, hella turnovers” in those games. This was Shakespearian — a modern classic of NFL trash talk.