When Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone spoke to the media on Wednesday, he said that no Jaguars players had come to him to say that the Jalen Ramsey situation was a distraction before Ramsey was traded to the Rams on Tuesday.
Marrone also wished Ramsey well with the Rams and professed a desire to move forward now that the matter has been resolved. Those were also the kinds of messages being sent by Jaguars players on Wednesday.
Defensive tackle Abry Jones said Ramsey’s former teammates “appreciate everything you did for us” and respected his wishes to move on in a trade. Cornerback DJ Hayden said the Jags are “still going to play football” while linebacker Myles Jack said he had been holding out hope that things could be resolved.
“I didn’t want to see him go,” Jack said, via Jacksonville.com. “I liked it that he was here if that makes sense. It wasn’t a distraction to us. As long as he was in the locker room, he was still part of the team. You can ask anyone in the locker room that we would much rather play with Jalen than not have him here. But that was a situation between him and the front office and it had to be resolved. But if I was a betting man, I’d figured we would have kept him here until after the deadline and somebody would have had to budge. To see him go, it was kind of sad.”
There was no sadness from Ramsey in his first appearance at the Rams’ facility and the Jaguars have a few more days to adjust to life without the cornerback before facing the Bengals.