Nate Burleson hopes Jalen Ramsey ‘gets over it’ and stays in Jacksonville

Nate Burleson was this week’s guest on Stacking the Box. He touched on CBD, Jennifer Lopez and what the Jacksonville Jaguars should do with Jalen Ramsey.

On this week’s episode of Stacking the Box, NFL analyst and former 11-year veteran in the league Nate Burleson spoke with FanSided‘s Matt Verderame and former NFL offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz on a bunch of topics. From CBD to Jennifer Lopez to what the Jacksonville Jaguars should do with their disgruntled star cornerback Jalen Ramsey, Burleson certainly covered a lot.

Burleson was a former third-round pick out of Nevada by the Minnesota Vikings in 2003. He spent three years in Minnesota, followed by four years with the Seattle Seahawks, four more with the Detroit Lions before spending the 2014 NFL offseason as a member of the Cleveland Browns before retiring.

Today, you can find Burleson all over the place in his many roles as an NFL football analyst. He is one of the four co-hosts on the NFL Network’s Good Morning, Football, alongside Kay Adams, Kyle Brandt and Peter Schrager. On Sunday’s Burleson works for CBS’ The NFL Today alongside James Brown, Bill Cowher, Boomer Esiason and Phil Simms.

So it’s pretty easy to see that Burleson is a very busy guy. This past week, he had the opportunity to interview Jennifer Lopez, who will be performing alongside Shakira at the Super Bowl LIV halftime show at Hard Rock Stadium down in Miami Gardens, Florida. He’s also working with cbdMD and is passionate about helping athletes find better recovery methods.

“cbdMD reached out to me and I said, ‘I’ll try it,” said Burleson. “I didn’t smoke pot, I wasn’t a big weed guy in the league. So I started to try it and it made a difference…It just relaxes me. It puts me in a space where I don’t feel like I’m wearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. And that’s just the mental space I’m in, not to mention the 10-plus procedures I’ve had on my body.”

Burleson believes that the NFL will one day be more lenient to CBD. He went on to share an alarming story about how he managed pain during his playing career, well before CBD was looked at as an acceptable alternative healing method.

“I had one of many surgeries,” said Burleson. “I had one of my many serious procedures done. The nurse came back from drawing my blood…and she says to me in a very concerning voice, ‘I’m concerned about you.’ ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘the toxicity level of what’s in your blood is alarmingly high.'”

“And I tried to explain to her jokingly, ‘haha, you don’t get it. I play football…’ And she looks at me and says, ‘I don’t care what you do for a living, this is alarming. I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years and I’ve never seen anybody with these type of results.'”

“And it was like a heavy moment for me. At one point in my life, I felt comfortable in my life going under…and then she’s telling me, ‘I’m concerned for you.’ And at that point, I thought how much longer and I going to play this game and then how much longer and I going to lean on the traditional practices of managing my pain.”

That’s some scary stuff, but it does seem that Burleson has found something that works for him. While he understands the point and purpose of traditional medicine, Burleson has seen the benefits of CBD in his eyes.

“And I tried to explain to her jokingly, ‘haha, you don’t get it. I play football…’ And she looks at me and says, ‘I don’t care what you do for a living, this is alarming. I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years and I’ve never seen anybody with these type of results.'”

When asked what it was like to interview J-Lo and if he was nervous, Burleson would say, “Yeah, I was nervous with J-Lo. I gotta keep it real with y’all.” The guys laughed collectively. Burleson said it was pretty intimidating, given her status as a cultural icon, not to mention her fiancé in former superstar baseball player Alex Rodriguez was standing just off-camera.

Verderame would later go on to ask Burleson about what Jacksonville should do with Ramsey. The star Jaguars cornerback wants to be traded. He has voiced his frustrations since Week’s road loss to the Houston Texans. While he played on Thursday Night Football in Week 3 versus the Tennessee Titans, Ramsey didn’t suit up for Jacksonville in Week 4 versus the Denver Broncos.

“I hope Jalen Ramsey gets over it and stays with Jacksonville,” said Burleson. “I get it. Sometimes you’re in your feeling so deep that you can’t get above water. And I think that’s where Jalen’s at.”

Burleson would go on to add, “I feel like if he can make it work if they can make it work, this is a relationship that needs to exist…The reason I say that you can go somewhere else and the grass might not always be greener.”

Burleson would talk about his NFL career spending three-to-four years at all three stops, citing that while a change in scenery might be good, it’s not always the case, for the team of the player.

“If Jalen Ramsey sticks with the Jacksonville Jaguars, he will go down as a legend and possibly as a hall of famer.”

“The reason I want Jalen Ramsey to stay in Jacksonville is how often do you get drafted into an organization and have a chance to go down as one of the legends? That’s hard to do. This is a business where the turnover rate is moving rapidly.”

“The moment you put your jersey down is the moment they forget about you. But what makes it hard to forget about you is if you stick with the same organization, regardless of the circumstance.”

He would cite Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals as a prime example of the benefits of sticking with one team. Burleson feels that Fitzgerald will be a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer when he does hang up the spikes.

To have had all of his accomplishments happen on the Cardinals organization speaks volumes and Burleson hopes for the same things with Ramsey in Jacksonville. “If Jalen Ramsey sticks with the Jacksonville Jaguars, he will go down as a legend and possibly as a hall of famer.”

Jacksonville is only in its 25th season as an NFL franchise. Ramsey is already approaching Mt. Rushmore status down in Duval County with guys like Tony Boselli, Mark Brunell, Maurice Jones-Drew and Fred Taylor ahead of him. Ramsey can be held in as high of regard as his idol Deion Sanders is with his first team in the Atlanta Falcons. Just don’t go leaving like Primetime now.

All this and more!

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Nate Burleson spoke with FanSided’s Matt Verderame on Stacking the Box with Geoff Schwartz on behalf of cbdMD.