Welcome to the NFL, kid.
Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Steve Smith Sr. has been engaging in trash talk for his entire 16-year career. On Sunday, he got under the skin of Jacksonville Jaguars rookie cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who ripped Smith after Jacksonville fell to Baltimore 19-17.
“Ya’ll tell me who got in whose head,” Ramsey said, according to ESPN.com. “He came up to me after the game, you feel me? Y’all tell me who got in whose head. He’s an old man acting like that.
“Ain’t nobody worried about him. He came up to me, you know what I’m saying, on some disrespectful stuff. The game’s over with. You still mad ’cause I was locking you up? All right, go sleep on that. I ain’t trying to hear that after the game.”
Smith led the Ravens with eight catches for 87 yards. He even hauled in a 5-yard reception on fourth down on Baltimore’s game-winning drive.
But that doesn’t seem to matter to Ramsey, who suggested he physically and psychologically beat Smith whenever the two were lined up across from each other. He was more concerned with their on-field beef — the two were flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct following a fourth-quarter altercation — and Smith approaching him after the game.
“It is what it is,” Ramsey said. “As a player, he’s still a good player. I’ll say that about him. But I don’t respect him as a man.”
Smith, who surely will find his way into the Hall of Fame after hanging up the cleats, is known for talking smack and not backing down from anyone, so of course the 37-year-old receiver fired back at the 21-year-old cornerback shortly after catching wind of his comments.
Ramsey might have barked up the wrong tree.
Thumbnail photo via Logan Bowles/USA TODAY Sports Images
