Tempers flared after the Rams’ win over the Giants on Sunday afternoon when Jalen Ramsey and Golden Tate came together on the field and got into a heated scuffle. Punches were thrown by both players, according to those in attendance, as they aired out their personal issues in the postgame handshakes.
The NFL is reviewing the matter, but the Rams themselves won’t be handing down any sort of suspension for Ramsey. Sean McVay addressed the fight on Monday night, saying he’s talked to Ramsey about it and that the team will handle it internally.
“Yeah, I spoke to him,” McVay told reporters. “Just making sure that we’re all on the same page of we can’t allow some of those things to get in the way of whether it ended up being something bad that happened for you or for our football team. Jalen is a smart guy, there’s a lot of emotions. As far as the specifics, you know, these are grown men, I didn’t get into the, ‘He said, she said.’ It was really more along the lines of let’s be smart. Let’s make sure we don’t let this take away from what we just were able to accomplish as a team.”
McVay was asked whether he has any extra concern regarding the matter because Ramsey is one of the highest-paid players on the team, but he didn’t buy into that. No matter how much a player is paid, he wants them to be smart and not put themselves in situations like the one Ramsey found himself in on Sunday.
“I would say the contract status, no it doesn’t have (anything to do with it),” he said. “It’s about our players. Anytime that stuff occurs – you know, it caught me off guard. You’re kind of shaking up, seeing some people and then you look over your shoulder and it’s melee. Those are things we want to avoid, and I’ve seen that occur a lot in these types of settings. It doesn’t make it okay and we have to be above that and we have to avoid that. I think you guys know how important it is for us to reflect the type of caliber of team, but also the way we want to handle some of those adverse situations and that’s not in alignment with how we want to do it. I expect us to be better as we move forward.”
Ramsey hasn’t spoken to the media yet since the incident occurred, but he did share a couple of cryptic posts on social media dancing around the fight. He said he’s winning in life and the Rams are winning, and “everything else too is a win.”
He likely won’t say anything publicly about his issues with Tate even when he does meet with the media, and this is likely something he and the entire team would like to put behind them.
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