Jalen Ramsey is the Steelers' best cornerback. He might be their best safety at the moment, too

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PITTSBURGH (AP) — Jalen Ramsey wasn't kidding when he told Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin after arriving in a trade with Miami early last summer that he would do whatever was necessary to win.

The seven-time Pro Bowler and three-time All-Pro cornerback revisited the conversation with Tomlin last week ahead of a meeting with Indianapolis.

The Steelers and their struggling secondary were hurting, both figuratively and literally, after getting shredded in back-to-back weeks by Joe Flacco and Jordan Love.

DeShon Elliott was headed to injured reserve after hyperextending his right knee in a way that likely ended his season. Jabrill Peppers and Chuck Clark were battling health issues of their own. Veteran Juan Thornhill was struggling in coverage, and newly acquired Kyle Dugger had been in town for all of a day or two.

During a chat he described as “mutual,” Ramsey, Tomlin and defensive coordinator Teryl Austin hatched a plan that moved one of the league's most respected defenders to safety — a position he hadn't played since his freshman year at Florida State, well over a decade ago — on an interim basis in hopes of providing some stability to a unit that had seen little of it during a frequently rocky opening two months to the season.

The results were promising. With Ramsey allowed to roam a little more freely, Pittsburgh limited the NFL's highest-scoring offense to 20 points (half of them in garbage time) and forcing six turnovers to snap a two-game losing streak.

Ramsey figures to be on the back end again Sunday night in Los Angeles, where another difficult test awaits against Justin Herbert and the Chargers (6-3).

It's a job Ramsey is more than willing to do, just don't suggest he's ready to make the move there full-time like Hall of Famer Rod Woodson did late in his career.

“I’m on my own path,” Ramsey said Friday. “So I’m embracing my own journey.”

One that has seen Ramsey go from Steelers tormentor — he was the linchpin of a young Jacksonville defense that stunned Pittsburgh in the divisional round of the 2017 playoffs — to a respected voice in a room filled with veterans like T.J. Watt and Cam Heyward, whose resumes rival Ramsey's save for the Super Bowl ring Ramsey won with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022.

With the Steelers wobbling after consecutive losses to Cincinnati and Green Bay, Tomlin asked Ramsey and tight end Jonnu Smith to speak to the team ahead of the visit by the Colts. The exact contents of Ramsey's pep talk are a mystery. He declined to get into specifics about it, and his teammates offered little in the way of details except for Ramsey urging them to “play with an edge.”

It's an edge that Ramsey has carried with him throughout his career, and one that has served a secondary in need of a new alpha after Pittsburgh sent Minkah Fitzpatrick to the Dolphins in exchange for Ramsey and Smith.

“Jalen leads in a different way, but you see his energy week in and week out,” Heyward said. "It’s infectious.”

And also necessary. Ramsey's intensity is buffeted by a high-level football IQ, one of the many reasons Tomlin and Austin felt comfortable approaching him about moonlighting at safety while Brandin Echols took on a larger role in the cornerback rotation.

“Whatever you need to do to win, he’s all for,” Austin said. “So, it was no problem. There was no kickback. It was actually like ‘OK, Hey, what do you need me to do? Let’s go.’”

As easy as Ramsey made it appear at times, he stressed it was not like riding a bike. It was challenging, but in a way that appealed to him.

“Playing corner for 10 years, you kind of learn the game and it kind of becomes ‘Same old, same old, same old' every day,” he said.

It sounds like a humble brag. It's not. Sitting in meetings with the safeties over the last two weeks has been educational in a way that Ramsey didn't necessarily expect when he agreed to the assignment.

“I'm learning kind of new things to look at, different ways to look at the game from a safety’s point of view,” he said. “It’s been cool.”

Just don't expect it to be permanent. Ramsey still considers himself a shutdown corner. The safety thing is just a side gig still at this point in his career, though who knows what might await down the road.

Ramsey's size (6-foot-1 and 211 pounds), physicality, and cerebral approach would seem to make him a perfect fit as a full-time safety at some point. He's not ready to go there yet, but the fact that Tomlin and Austin trusted him enough to approach him about getting out of his comfort zone for the betterment of the team meant something.

“I take pride in that, honestly,” Ramsey said. “And I love football, like literally every part of football. I just love football. So whatever it’s going to take for us to have guys in the best position for us to win games, I’m willing to do.”

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