The Los Angeles Rams may have gotten Jalen Ramsey, but the Jacksonville Jaguars got a huge haul for a cornerback that didn’t want to play for them anymore.
It had become untenable. So something had to be done. All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey wanted to get paid and preferably get paid out of Duval County in North Florida. After three years and change with the Jacksonville Jaguars, he was traded to the Los Angeles Rams ahead of the 2019 NFL trade deadline for quite the haul.
According to ESPN‘s Adam Schefter, the Rams gave up a 2020 first-round pick, a 2021 first-round pick and a 2021 fourth-round pick for the final year-and-a-half of Ramsey’s rookie contract. Ramsey is a hell of a player and a player that the Rams will love having in their secondary. That being said, what Jacksonville got in return bodes very well for the Jaguars’ future.
Though the Rams won the NFC last year, they now find themselves in third place in their division. They are behind both the 5-0 San Francisco 49ers and the 5-1 Seattle Seahawks in the NFC West standings. These two division rivals have handed the Rams their last two defeats. Los Angeles is only 3-3 on the year after getting off to a hot 3-0 start. They have since fallen on hard times.
The 49ers look to be one of the three best teams in the NFC and one of only two teams in football without a loss on the year, with the other being the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, the team that beat the Rams in Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in February. The Seahawks are led by the NFL MVP frontrunner in quarterback Russell Wilson.
Adding Ramsey to the secondary will fix things to some degree in 2019, but won’t take into full effect until 2020, his contract year. Ramsey may love playing in Los Angeles, but he has said before that he would like to play for his hometown team in the Tennessee Titans before he hangs up the spikes. In 2021, the Nashville native could end up playing for the Jaguars’ biggest rival.
But even after landing Ramsey, that doesn’t fix all the issues that plague the Rams; they still might be a mediocre to bad football team. The offensive line is decaying by the second. Sadly, so is former star running back Todd Gurley’s degenerative knee.
And we wouldn’t have told the Rams’ early-season tale without the horrendous play of late from quarterback Jared Goff. It’s as if NFL defensive coordinators have figured out his secret to success and that of his head coach Sean McVay: Goff can’t think for himself and is a sad puppy at the line of scrimmage with 15 seconds left on the play clock, working with exclusively 11 personnel.
In short, trading away Marcus Peters Tuesday afternoon only to trade for Ramsey on Tuesday night doesn’t take the Rams from being a so-so NFC team to a serious Super Bowl contender. They make not even make the playoffs, helping the Jaguars get another solid player in the 2020 NFL Draft somewhere in the teens in exchange for shipping a disgruntled Ramsey out of town.
If this Ramsey experiment blows up as the Peters one did, guess who has the Rams’ first- and fourth-round picks in 2021? You guess it, Jacksonville! If Goff continues to throw for under 100 yards against division rivals, Gurley’s knee and the offensive line fall apart, and Ramsey just wants to go home to Nashville, the Jaguars could be getting the last laugh by being a contender in 2021.