The Patriots aren’t much for talking. But they don’t begrudge Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey’s guarantee that his team was going to the Super Bowl.
That’s why the reaction Ramsey got from the Patriots locker room was muted, and graceful.
“Man, that guy’s really good,” Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater said, via Phil Perry of NBC Sports Boston. “And he should be confident, because he’s very, very good. The good Lord made that guy, and he said, ‘Let there be corner.’ And there he is. I’d be confident if I were him, as well.”
Of course, Ramsey was firing up his own people rather than overtly taking shots at New England, but it’s clearly the kind of thing which will come up again in their offices.
But they didn’t dispute his right to talk, which he’s backed up. The second-year corner has already earned All-Pro honors, and that leads to respect from his peers.
“Hey, man, Jalen Ramsey’s a good player,” Patriots safety Duron Harmon said. “He talks a lot of trash. That’s part of his game, and you can’t take that away from him. He’s confident. He should be confident in his team. He has a really good football team. The top two AFC teams are left, and he’s a part of one of them.
“His approach to the game is different than ours, but we can’t knock him for it. We know they’re going to come ready to play, and we’ve just got to match their type of physicality and also just their emotion and their readiness to get ready to play.”
Of course, the Patriots have a longer resume as a team to brag about, which is part of the reason they’re not falling into any traps (publicly) about Ramsey’s comments.