You have to hand it to Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey — he is not shy about voicing his opinions. Earlier this year, he was interviewed for the NFL Network Top 100 series, and he said Jimmy Garoppolo was successful against the Jaguars because of scheme stuff more than anything else. He liked Garoppolo’s potential, but thought five starts was not enough to put him in the Top 100.
Ramsey is back at it, this time with GQ. Ramsey has emerged as a high profile, big talking NFL player, and GQ sat down with him to get his opinion on many of the quarterbacks around the league. Ramsey did not hold back, and I thought the interview was all sorts of entertaining.
Naturally, he got a chance to follow up on his previous Jimmy G comments. Ramsey talked more about the scheme defense he previously raised.
“I don’t know yet. Just cause when they beat us, his hype picked up. They were like, “He beat the number one defense.” It was all schemes. He didn’t beat us. It wasn’t like he diced us up. It was literally all schemes. They were doing flat routes to the wide open fullback, and he’s running for 20 yards down the field four times during the game... So he didn’t really dice us up. It was their fullback and their tight end on over routes. But if you know how to work within your scheme then it means you’re good. I guess you could say he’s good.”
The most interesting aspect of this interview from a 49ers perspective was his praise of Kyle Shanahan in a sort of back-handed way. He was going through various quarterbacks saying whether or not they were good. At one point, he asks who the Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback is. I get that he plays in the AFC, but Matt Ryan has been around for a long time at this point. You’d think the name would come to Ramsey a little easier.
Nonetheless, he is not a fan of Matt Ryan, and he points to his performance with and without Kyle Shanahan as his reasoning.
“I think Matt Ryan’s overrated. You can’t tell me you win MVP two years ago, and then last year, you a complete bust, and you still got Julio Jones? There’s no way that should ever happen. I don’t care. You know what that tells me? That tells me [Offensive Coordinator Kyle] Shanahan left, went to San Francisco, got Garoppolo, made Garoppolo this big thing. And now Garoppolo is a big name—and now [Matt Ryan] has this bad year? Alright, well, was it really you, or was it your coach? He was doing what was asked of him and it was making him look really, really good.”
I would kind of like to see an annual interview with Ramsey where he offers up his latest opinions on quarterbacks. If Jimmy Garoppolo builds on last year, is it primarily because of Kyle Shanahan, or does Garoppolo’s potential factor in as well? If he thinks Matt Ryan is overrated because of his performance with and without Kyle Shanahan, it might take some time to get a boost in his opinion of Jimmy G.
The whole article is worth a read just to see him hating on a host of quarterbacks. He attributes Eli’s success more to Odell Beckham, Joe Flacco “sucks,” Josh Allen is “trash,” Ben Roethlisberger is “decent at best,” and Andrew Luck doesn’t think he’s that good.” On the other hand, he thinks Jared Goff is average to above average, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady do not suck, and Deshaun Watson and Carson Wentz are gonna be the top two quarterbacks for much of the next decade. If you want a real laugh, check out his comments on Blake Bortles, and particularly “Playoff Blake.”
If you want a quick summation, SB Nation ranked quarterbacks according to Ramsey’s thoughts. I recommend reading the whole GQ interview, however.