The Jacksonville Jaguars are riding a four game win streak to Glendale this weekend to take on the Arizona Cardinals. Outside of the obvious story lines of Blaine Gabbert against the Jaguars and Calais Campbell against the Cardinals, we also get a matchup of Jalen Ramsey against wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald.
While Fitzgerald isn’t quite the player he once was, he’s still a big part of the Cardinals offense and it will be fun to watch the wily veteran against the young hot shot during the game. Ramsey has done a great job either shutting down or getting in the head of some of the league’s top receivers, but leading up to the game Ramsey has shown some unusual respect to Fitzgerald.
“Ever since the schedule came out, I’m not going to lie, I’ve been looking forward to this one,” Ramsey told The Frank Frangie Show on 1010XL Monday afternoon. “Just because he’s a legend, easily going to be a Hall of Famer when his career is done, which I don’t know when that will be because he’s still at the top of his game if you ask me. Haven’t started my preparation for him yet, but I definitely know I’m excited for it. I’m going to anticipate following him during the game and getting some good action. Hopefully at the end of the game he will respect the type of player I am.”
It was interesting to hear Ramsey praise a wide receiver he’s about to matchup with, considering the things he’s said in the past about wide receivers, albeit a lot of that comes after the game when he shuts them down. Either way, it’s clear Ramsey respects what Fitzgerald has done in the league and looks at it as a challenge to see where he ranks in regards to matching up with some all-time greats. You can see he’s hoping that a “legend” like Fitzgerald will offer him respect after the game with the last line in Ramsey’s quote, which he made a point to put in there at the end of his answer.
The matchup itself in game will be interesting too, because Ramsey seems to anticipate shadowing Fitzgerald during the game, which will put him inside at the times. The Cardinals seem to move Fitzgerald around now and lose him out of the slot quite a bit, so we will get to see what kind of adjustments defensive coordinator Todd Wash will do as far as moving Ramsey around in the defensive backfield to cover Fitzgerald.