The Miami Dolphins beat the New England Patriots 31-17 on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium to earn the season sweep against their division rival.
One huge reason for Miami’s victory was the performance of cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who made his debut in aqua and orange on Sunday following a grueling recovery process from a meniscus injury that he suffered in training camp.
Ramsey recorded an interception and essentially shut down one side of the field completely for the majority of the game, helping lessen the impact of Xavien Howard and Jevon Holland both being out.
After the game, Ramsey spoke with the media about his recovery, rehab and team. Here’s everything he said:
Q. How do you feel? First game with the Dolphins success?
“It felt good. Don’t get it twisted, I’m happy I had an interception, but I definitely don’t want that to be the storyline. I just want to talk about how we got a good hard-fought division win. My success, it comes from the preparation that I put in and the team around me. It’s not just me. I work really hard during the week to prepare myself to feel like Jalen Ramsey and it’s just a product of it. But it was a great, hard-fought win for the team, so that was dope.”
Q. What were some of the emotions that were flowing through your body or your mind as your knee was returning? Was it ultimately always your goal to return for this game or what was the timetable for you?
“Emotions, a lot of them. But mainly just extremely thankful, extremely grateful. God has blessed me. He continues to blessed me and he continues to show me so much grace and mercy, even when I don’t deserve it. I’m just super thankful that I have praying friends and family around me, and God just puts me in situations to be able to show who I am and thrive and worship him out there on the field. I just felt all of those emotions running. The timeline changed so many different times, honestly, but it got to a certain point where I kind of circled this game. When I put my mind to certain things, I just go for it all out, and I feel like your mind is so powerful that you can kind of will the rest of your body to heal quicker or get back strong enough or whatever you’ve got to do. So yeah, I circled this game a little while ago, and then the whole staff, coaches, trainers, weight room staff, everybody, we kind of locked in on a specific plan to meet that goal. But yeah, they first told me I would be back like December, late December, and I really wanted to beat that timeline, at least by a month. I don’t know, it’s something about the month of October. Like it’s a special month to me. My mom, dad, a lot of my people, my shorty, everybody’s birthday is in October. October is just a turnt month for the Ramseys. It was kind of special for me to make it this game and stick to that plan.”
Would you say playing in the throwbacks had a little something to do with that, too?
“No, I didn’t even know. I don’t care if we were wearing a white tee, I’m going to go out there and do what I do. It’s swaggy, though, so it’s a plus.”
Q. From the point when you went down in practice and being told December or even not knowing if you could come back before that point until now, but how do you feel emotionally now that you’ve kind of overcome all this?
“Kind of like I told him, just extremely grateful, thankful. Like the stories will probably be like ‘Jalen Ramsey came back’ and ‘Jalen Ramsey beat these timelines’ and did all of that, but honestly, none of this would have been possible without Dr. Uribe fixing my knee. They might have to do a case study on whatever he did to help it heal so quickly. The training staff, they did an amazing job. I had good days. I had bad days and everything in between. And the training staff, they never babied me. They pushed me. They were super smart with me, even when I didn’t want to be smart. Weight room staff, everybody, they really built in my mind like a perfect plan, and we just stuck to it. I just had to listen to them. That’s it.”
Q. From the point of the surgery to today, at what point did you start to feel like, hey, this might be moving along faster than I thought it might be? When did you start thinking, I might be back before December? Was there a point after the surgery?
“Before the surgery I said I was going to be back before December. That was never – December was never going to happen. That wasn’t even in nobody’s mind around me. We don’t work like that. We beat anything that people say. December was never in – that was just not going to happen. We just wasn’t going to make that happen. But November, that was realistic. November was super, super realistic. That was the plan for a while. Like I just told him, I did have a couple different dates circled, but as I started to feel good – I was begging them – usually you don’t get MRIs every month. I was begging them to get an MRI every month just because I felt so great. I just really felt like they were doing a good job, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, we got MRIs every month and we saw how it was healing, and we just kind of started progressing from there and accelerated a little bit. I don’t know exactly when I circled this game, but whenever it was, we got to it after that.”
Q. Did you keep the ball?
“I should have. It was a good play, but in order for it to be a great play, in order for me to help the team out a little bit more, I should have scored. I’ve got to find a way to do that.”
Q. There was a lot of conflicting reporting on what exactly happened to your knee. Can you tell us from the source himself what happened?
“Yeah. I was locking up Tyreek one day in practice, and I made a break, and I don’t know, my knee just popped or something, gave out. I don’t know. It probably already was a little funky up in there anyway. Then I don’t know, like I did get it repaired. People think, ‘oh, he came back early because he got a trim.’ No, I had a full repair. But just the way my body reacted to the surgery and everything and the way the blood flowed and everything that I did, I don’t know, and everybody that helped me — like I said, they might do a case study. I really can’t tell you. I’m not a scientist. I’m not no doctor. I can’t tell you how it healed so quickly or what happened, but I’m just glad it did.”
Q. Can you break down that interception and was that a goal of yours to come out of this with a pick?
“I told the whole team I was going to get a pick today. Told the whole team that. I’ve been telling the whole team for a couple weeks that I was going to get a pick my first game.”
Q. Was there in-game conversation about your snap count or how long you would play today?
“Yeah, yeah, I was definitely not supposed to play that long today. But it’s okay. You know, I just felt like how the flow of the game was going, I needed to stay in there and try to finish it off for my teammates. You know, I’ve got to get better, got to play a little bit better in the second half, correct a couple little things, and get my endurance and my strength a little bit better so I can feel really good in that second half, as well, kind of like my normal self. But yeah, it wasn’t the plan to play that long. It was just kind of the flow of the game, and I felt good. I never really felt like we had crazy long drives where I needed to come out and get a breather, so they was trying to sub me in and out, but I kept telling them no.”
Q. Seeing the video that you posted on social media the other day, how much of a motivating factor was it hearing people skeptical about the level of play you would have when you returned?
“That was just like my – I got like a media team. They just put the video – did you like the video? You saw it. Did you like it?”
Q. Physically like it? Yeah.
“I appreciate you. My media team put that together. They thought it was dope, I thought it was dope, so I just posted it. To be honest with you, I really don’t care about what a lot of other people say. I’ve got a core group of family, friends, and then my teammates, coaches and everybody who I do care what they’re going to think about me and how I handle my business and how I go about my days, game days, whatever it may be. So it was more so about proving them right today. Like before the game I was just telling everybody, ‘yo, I’m going to be as advertised today, to y’all.’ Like Mike, I’m going to prove you right; like Chris, I’m going to prove you right today. Today is going to be one of those days for me where – that’s really what it was about. It wasn’t about proving somebody wrong, but I did that, too, huh.”
