Jalen Ramsey has covered plenty of receivers in his NFL career. But when he sat down at Deion Sanders’ leadership retreat, he named the one player who gave him the most trouble: Antonio Brown.

“We had battled within every single play,” Ramsey said in a video on Well Off Media’s YouTube channel, surrounded by a group of young athletes. “No plays off. We at it every play. Him and his quarterback might have a crazy connection, I’m thinking, ‘They might make something up on me on the sideline. He’s about to go.’ [Brown] hated being subbed out. I could tell he hated being subbed out.

“Anytime they subbed him out during the game, especially if I was following or somebody was following, he was pissed. He was probably back in the next play. He had a different kind of stamina. Could never tell when he was tired, so I carried it the same way. I’m like, ‘He ain’t about to know when I’m tired, either.’ That’s probably the toughest thing.”

Starting as a 6th-round pick out of Central Michigan in the 2010 draft, Antonio Brown built a reputation for refusing to sit down. While playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he topped 100 catches in six straight seasons (2013 – 18) and seven seasons with over 1100 receiving yards. Ramsey, speaking about Brown, was describing a receiver who treated every snap like a 4th-and-long.

The fiercest example of this came when Ramsey went up against Brown in November 2018. Ramsey, playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars at the time, shadowed Brown most of the day, held him to three catches on eight targets (where Ramsey was covering him), and picked off Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger twice on throws meant for Brown. Brown fought back, too, with a 78-yard touchdown that put the Steelers on the board, and a clutch 25-yard grab with five seconds on the clock that set up the winning score in a 20-16 Steelers victory.

Even on a day Ramsey played about as well as any cornerback can, he still couldn’t shut down Brown. This is why Ramsey still brings him up instead of all the receivers he has bested so far. And that respect ran both ways. Earlier in that 2018 offseason, Brown had even called Ramsey his favorite cornerback to face in an NFL Network interview.

“Yeah, he’s my favorite, man, because you know he takes it seriously,” Brown said. “He’s got a chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t want to lose a route. He’s got guys on the sideline talking to him while he’s running in the middle of the play. Going against a guy like that makes it fun because you know that’s going to be the measuring stick of where your level is at. Because you know that guy is at a high level. … It’s the same with me, to be honest.”

Antonio Brown’s career unraveled soon after – he hopped from the New England Patriots (2019) to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2020-2021) before suspensions, injuries, and team troubles ended his football career. Jalen Ramsey has also bounced from Jacksonville to Los Angeles and then to Pittsburgh. But the standard Brown set stuck. Ramsey started carrying his own fatigue the way Brown carried his, because he couldn’t let a receiver he respected see him get tired first.