PITTSBURGH The year is 2016 and the map dot is Tallahassee, Fla. In the morning, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, general manager Kevin Colbert and defensive backs assistant Carnell Lake will park themselves at Florida State's football facility for their annual pro day, watching Jalen Ramsey put on a show in a gray tank top, broad shoulders and slick hips skying to high-point the ball thanks to his 41 1/2-inch vertical leap.
But first, on this evening, Tomlin is performing one of his favorite pre-draft rituals. It's the night-before dinner with prospects he's high on, and while one seemed to be out of their league, Tomlin and Colbert shot their shot anyway.
"We fully expected him to turn down our meal," Tomlin said of star cornerback Jalen Ramsey. "He didn't. He came. He asked great questions. Look at how his career's turned out. There's talent sometimes that creates draft position. When I see passion for the game and energy for the game and intellectual development and seeking the knowledge of some of that stuff, that's the things that makes freakish talent turn into freakish play."
Now, at long last, Tomlin gets to see it and coach it up close.
After watching him intercept three passes in three regular season matchups over the years, plus play a key role for a Jaguars team that effectively sparked what's now the franchise's longest drought between playoff victories, the Steelers now have Ramsey on their side. He has Minkah Fitzpatrick-sized shoes to fill as he suits up for his fourth NFL team and third in four years.
Ramsey's ride here is reminiscent of a sidebar Tomlin once had with stud pass rusher Chase Young. Tomlin told Young on the sideline he never wants to lose enough games to get a guy like him a big, strong, fast, productive player from a college powerhouse widely projected to go in the top five.
But the other side of that coin is that Tomlin refuses to accept that any player could be his white whale. If he can't get him in the draft, there's always free agency down the road. If he never hits the open market, there's always the chance for a trade.
"People were giggling at Jalen Ramsey and I eating dinner," Tomlin said of that same pro day-eve date.
No one's laughing now. Ramsey has never been a free agent, but he's now been traded three times since 2019. This latest deal sends him to a team with which he has a fiery history.
You might remember Ramsey calling Ben Roethlisberger "decent at best" in a 2018 interview (among a slew of shots at other NFL quarterbacks). Most of Ramsey's takes aged poorly, particularly the one that Josh Allen is "trash."
"He has a strong arm, but he ain't all that," he said of Roethlisberger. "I played him twice [in 2017] and he really disappointed me."
Roethlisberger did get picked off three times by Ramsey, who also tipped a No. 7 pass into the hands of safety Barry Church en route to a pick-six on Oct. 8, 2017. The Jaguars won that one, 30-9, in Pittsburgh and prompted Roethlisberger to suggest tongue-in-cheek that maybe he just didn't have it anymore.
Ramsey is no longer that brash 24-year-old who didn't mind making headlines with salacious quotes. He did end up disillusioned with the Dolphins, which is why he wanted to be traded, but he did so with much less drama than his Jaguars exit in 2019.
Ramsey essentially forced his way out of Duval County, arriving at training camp that summer in an armored truck to make a show of his new contract demands. It didn't materialize. He didn't feel appreciated by vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin, had a sideline altercation in Week 2 with head coach Doug Marrone, and it was widely believed Ramsey held himself out with a back injury for three games until the Rams traded for him.
He's now a 30-year-old father of three daughters, closer even to his 31st birthday in October. His own father, Lamont, set the standard.
Lamont Ramsey is a 30-year veteran of the Nashville Fire Department in the city where he was born and raised. That's also where he brought up his two sons, Jamal and Jalen. Jamal, three years Jalen's senior, would become a big-time high school football star and play collegiately at Middle Tennessee State. He showed his little brother the way and how Jalen could be even better than him.
Mission accomplished, as the younger Ramsey went on to a record-setting track and field career in the state of Tennessee while establishing a five-star recruiting ranking. Over the course of his journey, Ramsey's also made himself a lot of money $118 million, with more on the way while winning a Super Bowl with the Rams and cementing himself among the league's best cornerbacks. Tomlin actually called him "the top corner in the game" before their most recent meeting, back in 2019, fresh off Ramsey's trade from the Jaguars to the Rams.
"He's long, he's fast, he's combative," Tomlin said. "His above-the-neck game and feel for the passing game is excellent. He's physical. People often forget that this guy was probably the best safety prospect in the draft, as well, when he came out, and that just speaks to his talent level and how immense it is."
The most pressing question looming over Ramsey's addition is whether he'll circle back to that long-ago foreshadowing of a move to safety. It makes more sense for the Steelers secondary on paper, now that Fitzpatrick is gone, but it's antithetical to Ramsey's legacy as a shut-down corner.
Ramsey has spanned generations of elite receivers and scrapped with seemingly all of them. Allen Robinson, the former Steelers wideout who played with Ramsey in Jacksonville and Los Angeles, considers him perhaps the best trash-talker he's encountered as a friend or foe.
A.J. Green, Steve Smith and DeAndre Hopkins were some of the early scuffles. More recently, Brandon Aiyuk and DK Metcalf his new teammate have been the ones throwing hands with Ramsey.
"Looking forward to another battle," Metcalf said before he and the Seahawks faced Ramsey and the Dolphins last season. "But nothing different. Still football at the end of the day."
If you pull up Ramsey-Metcalf highlights, though, some of it looks more like an MMA bout. Nonetheless, those two swapped jerseys and posed for a photo after that Seattle-Miami game last season.
Now they'll get to hone their craft together at training camp in Latrobe. Another feisty, experienced, Super Bowl-winning cornerback will be on Ramsey's side in Darius Slay Jr. to say nothing of Joey Porter Jr. trying to put his own stamp on the position and it'll be Aaron Rodgers throwing the ball to Metcalf.
Bring some popcorn.
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