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Jalen Ramsey receives week-long suspension from Jaguars after threatening 'war' against team reporters

jack baer
Staff writer
·4 min read
Jalen Ramsey will miss a week of preseason football. (AP Photo)
Jalen Ramsey will miss a week of preseason football. (AP Photo)

A skirmish during Jacksonville Jaguars training camp between Dante Fowler Jr. and Yannick Ngakoue came with some collateral damage, as star cornerback Jalen Ramsey has been suspended in the fallout of the incident for attacking the local media over its coverage of the incident.

The Jaguars suspended Ramsey for one week after the 23-year-old tweeted his displeasure toward the media with some aggressive language, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.

Why did the Jaguars suspend Jalen Ramsey?

There is probably some background tension to this and there could have been some more tweets that Ramsey opted to delete, but his most recent tweet expressing hostility toward the media was this one targeting Florida Times-Union reporter Phillip Heilman.

That tweet was likely in response to a video tweeted by Heilman a few hours earlier, showing the ugly confrontation between Fowler and Ngakoue.

Fowler was also apparently suspended for the incident, according to Heilman. Ramsey also reportedly tried to step in when he saw media recording the confrontation, profanely telling them to stop recording then requesting a meeting with the media to chastise them about their recent coverage, per Heilman.

Ramsey was near the skirmish, which lasted about a minute. When he saw multiple reporters recording the incident with their phones, he approached and shouted, “Hey, man, y’all stop recording that s—, man” as well as other obscenities.

Shortly afterward, Ramsey requested through the Jaguars’ public relations department to speak to the media about the incident. That lasted about 10 minutes, during which Ramsey expressed his displeasure about recent coverage, including what he perceived to be a negative tone regarding him missing multiple training camp practices because of the birth of his daughter.

This all really seems to fall more in the category of “Heilman doing his job” rather than “Heilman attacking the Jaguars,” but Ramsey apparently felt differently. Heilman had written about the incident in his practice report, but the language was fairly tame:

It’s clear that after 11 consecutive practices in full pads, the Jaguars are getting antsy. During 11-on-11 drills, TE O’Shaughnessy caught a pass near the sideline where the defense was standing. In a matter of seconds DE Dante Fowler shoved O’Shaughnessy that also included involvement from Ramsey. After practice, defensive ends Yannick Ngakoue and Fowler had to be separated repeatedly by teammates.

Again, this is Heilman doing his job. If two players get into a very visible argument and need to be separated during a practice open to the media, that’s on them. Independent reporters aren’t going to sit on something right in front of them that’s newsworthy just because the incident is embarrassing for the team.

Jalen Ramsey reacts to his suspension

Ramsey has long been known as one the NFL’s most engaging Twitter personalities and we’ve all enjoyed some of his past beefs, but that obviously takes a turn when the people he’s attacking are reporters whose only offense was not going out of their way to protect his friends.

The cornerback offered little in the way of an apology when he tweeted right before news of the suspension hit, chalking up his behavior to defending his teammates.

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