Aqib Talib recounts frustrating split with Rams: 'It felt like I got kicked off the team'

[theramswire.usatoday.com]

Cameron DaSilva

Marcus Peters isn’t the only former Rams player who was frustrated with the way the team handled his departure. Peters blasted Los Angeles for trading him in 2019, saying he felt disrespected by the move, especially after the Rams turned around and acquired Jalen Ramsey shortly thereafter.

Aqib Talib also broke his silence about the way things went down in 2019 when he was placed on injured reserve and then traded to the Dolphins in what was a cap-saving move. On the same podcast with Peters, Talib detailed his frustrating split with the Rams and a heated conversation he had with Sean McVay before the trade happened.

“To me, I was hot because I went in the Monday before I went and I broke my ribs in the game Week 5,” Talib recalled. “So I slide in there and they’re like, ‘We’re gonna let Troy [Hill] play.’ I ain’t never heard no [expletive] like that.

“‘So, all right, so what? I’m on the bench? Troy start getting roasted, will I come back in? Or how’s that gonna work?’ I’m with it. My rib’s broken anyway. You’re telling me I can’t practice, I’m gonna have to play in the game? So am I on deck if somebody go down, I go in?’

“And he was like, ‘Nah, we’re thinking about putting you on IR.’ So I’m like, ‘Bro, for the broke ribs? And he’s like, ‘Yeah, man. Because I don’t know the vibe. You ain’t never had to do this before and we don’t know how you’re going to handle it.’”

Talib was taken aback by the Rams’ decision to put him on injured reserve despite him feeling like he could play. He didn’t want to get shut down for at least eight weeks, given how minor he thought the injury was.

So he grew frustrated and essentially told McVay that if he was put on IR, he would go back home to Dallas and not attend any team meetings or anything in L.A.

“I don’t know, it was kinda mind-blowing to me,” he said. “So I’m like, I kinda got hot. ‘Put me on IR, man, and I ain’t coming to none of this. I’m going to the crib. Put me on IR, I’ll be in Dallas. Don’t even worry about it.’ So I think I left the meeting room with Sean kinda hot. Then the next day, I get the call like, ‘Hey, well we might trade you to Miami.’ So I’m like, ‘Aw, man.’ They started making it seem like – I wanna call, ‘Hey P, did I do something wrong, fam?’ It made me feel like I did something wrong. Like y’all just pushing me, like I’m off the team, basically. I felt like I got kicked off the team. That’s how I felt.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t an amicable split between the Rams and their veteran corner. Talib never suited up for the Dolphins as he remained on injured reserve, and then he retired from the NFL last September.

Talib didn’t like how he felt he was being blamed for the team’s struggles after starting 3-2. And by being placed on injured reserve – and eventually traded – he felt like the Rams were essentially benching him and using the rib injury as an excuse.

After the Rams traded for Ramsey and shipped Peters to Baltimore, Talib understood their plan. But that wasn’t made clear to him at the time, which he didn’t appreciate.

“The whole team kinda playing decent. We ain’t all playing good, we ain’t all playing bad. But I’m like, for what? That’s how I felt,” he said. “I felt there’s a better way to do that. And then at the end of the day, months later, I look back at it, I see, ‘Oh, Ramsey coming in. MP gone.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, they just had the opportunity to get Ramsey so they just moved us around.’ But bro, there’s a way to do that, in my opinion. You brought me in to be one of the leaders of the team. I’m one of the five guys who gotta come in there at 6 o’clock in the morning before meetings and you ask me about everything else. Call me and tell me that. Like, ‘Hey, we might get this dude Ramsey. We gotta play to get Ramsey. We just gotta move stuff around, looking at our future. We probably weren’t going to re-sign you, Aqib.’ Just be honest with me. He couldn’t give me no answers.

“It was kinda mind-blowing to me. I ain’t like how they handled it. … I was just confused about the whole thing. But you know, like you said. I moved on. I ain’t got no time to worry about it.”

Talib said he still keeps in touch with players on the Rams and he suggested that things aren’t the same without him and Peters in the locker room. He said a player told him they don’t have any more dinners with the defensive backs.

“I feel like after we left, that [expletive] spun out right there,” Talib said. “Talking to the guys I still talk to, they’re like, ‘Bro, it ain’t nothing. We don’t have no DB dinners since.’ I’m like, see?”

Both he and Peters say they’re gotten over their split with the Rams, but they wish McVay and the team handled everything differently than they did. Since trading the two veterans, the Rams have discovered a dominant tandem at cornerback with Ramsey and Darious Williams, so it worked out for them; Los Angeles ranked 1st defensively against the pass (and overall) in 2020.