Remembering the Jalen Ramsey “incident”

When Kyle posted some stories we followed in 2018, it got me wondering: when exactly did that Jalen Ramsey spat go down?

Turns out, about a year ago, we were talking about this.

For those of you who forgot or are unfamiliar, the NFL had their top-100 players list in 2018. The voting for these lists are quite nebulous and it gives an impression of a glorified popularity contest. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo made the list at 90. If you’re wondering why we haven’t covered it here, it’s because the list has been absent. Go to NFL.com and the only 100 you’ll see is a link to the 100 years of NFL football.

Back to 2018. After the list did their countdown, the analysts had Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey on as a guest to go over the final 100 and he wasn’t onboard with Garoppolo being on it. This was a legit argument. Garoppolo played in five games with the 49ers, barely enough to put him on a top-anything. As I said then, Garoppolo moved merchandise in 2018, so that may have had a hand in all of it.

Ramsey could have quit while he was ahead, but he doubled down and struck gold for the day with this:

What he play, five games? He has good potential. I think he’ll be a good player but, my experience playing him, it was a lot of scheme stuff. It wasn’t like he was just dicing us up.

Hearing that, I went and wrote a quick rebuttal, to remind him—and everyone, scheme or no scheme, the Jaguars got their butts kicked.

Garoppolo threw two passing touchdowns and added a rushing touchdown via quarterback sneak en route to the 49ers hanging 44 points on the team with one of the best defenses from 2017. One of those touchdowns was on their opening drive (a first against Jacksonville’s defense) and another one was this improvisational gem.

It wasn’t all Garoppolo. Blake Bortles threw an awful pick-six along with the Jaguars committing bonehead penalties at the end of the game, but he played solid.

After writing the post the night before, I went to bed and prepared for a long meeting unrelated to Niners Nation. That day, however, as I’m sitting in a conference room answering questions, my pocket starts thumping like mad thanks to my phone. I thought it was Fooch trying to get me for something, but my hands were tied. It’s when I got out of there and out of the corporate highrise that I saw what everyone was talking about:

Protip: When you start arguing with someone, anyone on the internet, that is the moment you lost the argument.

Ramsey’s response was a surprise. He was actually ticked we didn’t @ him when writing a rebuttal. We being a San Francisco 49ers team site. That alone offered enough material for the next few days. You’d think he’d appreciate not being harassed by us, but what do I know?

While I was away, social media had been set ablaze. Twitter chaos ensued as fans jumped in to remind Ramsey that he either lost the game, was full of crap, or both. Jaguars fans and 49ers haters alike joined Ramsey to try and tell us that Ramsey was right. Fooch took the high road with an eloquent and articulate argument:

If you noted my protip, you know how this went:

The staff jumped in and started having some fun with it:

And then, once I was away from anyone that could judge, sent my own reply:

I’d like to point out that Garoppolo is still a starting quarterback with the 49ers while Bortles is now with the Los Angeles Rams and not a starting quarterback. He’s also played in two more games.

A year later, the big question. Was it scheme? Was Ramsey right? Well...yeah. The Better Rivals crew articulated it as such on their podcast the day after the spat. Oscar makes a superb argument that the 49ers beat the Jaguars by scheme. One that I tend to agree with.

The problem was, the person making this argument was a guy on a team that also had players calling the game a “T-shirt and hat game,” meaning they would beat the 49ers and get their division winners T-shirt and hats. He was also on a team that got 44 points hung on them.

I did not @ Ramsey in the tweet to this post either...