Will Jalen Ramsey’s back injury keep him unavailable on the trade market?

How real is Jalen Ramsey‘s injury? Are the Jags coming up with ways to keep him around despite his trade demands? Is he off the market then?

The Jacksonville Jaguars have announced that Jalen Ramsey will not play for the team in Week 5. While that information itself is not that surprising given his recent trade demands and the overall drama of the season, his reason for missing time certainly is a shock.

Ramsey will miss Week 5, according to the Jags, due to a back injury. This comes on the heels of missing the team’s Week 4 game due to the birth of his second child.

What’s interesting about all of this is that the Jags surprised us all in the first place by having him play in Week 3 during the team’s Thursday Night Football matchup against the Tennessee Titans. At that point, the trade rumors were cranked up to 11 and it seemed inevitable that a deal would happen. That Jacksonville would potentially risk injury to the trade asset made no sense. Since then, however, Ramsey has been “out” for these various reasons.

Certainly it’s noble (and normal) for a father to be there for the birth of his children. Any reasonable person should expect every other NFL player to miss for those exact same reasons if needed. And if Ramsey is also dealing with pain due to an injury, then it’s definitely something to attend to.

At the same time, it’s interesting that there are now two straight weeks with no Ramsey for things that seemed to spring up fairly quickly out of the blue. How far back does this injury go? Is Ramsey leaning on this hoping it helps him leave? Will he suddenly get healthy if another team pays for his services? If so, are there measures that can be taken on the part of the Jags to penalize for having faked it (or at least milked it) this entire time?

Then again, if the back injury is serious and it really is forcing him to honestly miss games despite his desire to play and compete, that complicates the trade picture just as much. Suddenly Ramsey comes with questions—serious ones given the ongoing nature of many back injuries—for a player who is going to cost a team so much when it comes to both money and trade assets. If the going rate is multiple first round picks, a health scare like this might be enough for any franchise to back off.

A team like the Chiefs have been linked to Ramsey since he first stated his desire to leave the team. The Chiefs also have a history of trading draft picks for the assets they desire (e.g. Frank Clark or trading up for Patrick Mahomes). It’s not out of the realm of possibility for Brett Veach, the team’s general manager, to put something together in order to bring in Ramsey. But would he really go to all that trouble if Ramsey would have a hard time passing a physical?

Ramsey remains an elite talent at a position of need for most teams, including the Chiefs. He makes sense as a lockdown corner option the team has lacked since Marcus Peters was traded away to the Rams. While the pass defense is definitely improved over last year, Ramsey would be a significant upgrade for the secondary.

If he’s actually healthy and available, Ramsey could still be the trade deadline prize for K.C. Then again, at this point, it’s impossible to know what’s real and what’s more drama.