PITTSBURGH — Jalen Ramsey grinned as he thought about the sheer improbability of it all. Playing in his 140th career NFL game, Ramsey doesn’t have many firsts left in a career replete with seven Pro Bowl selections, three first-team All-Pro nods and a Super Bowl ring. But in the Steelers’ 23-9 Week 6 win against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, the veteran defensive back found himself in uncharted territory.

Late in the first quarter, Ramsey blitzed off the left edge and ran unabated at rookie quarterback Dillon Gabriel, smoking the Browns quarterback for the Steelers’ first sack of the game.

Three quarters later, Ramsey was in the backfield again.

This time on third down late in the fourth quarter, Ramsey dodged a pair of Browns receivers, slipped by tight end Blake Whiteheart and chased Gabriel out of the pocket, dragging him down four yards shy of the line of scrimmage. Not only did Ramsey bookend the Steelers’ six-sack game with the first and last sacks of the afternoon, but he also recorded the first multi-sack game of his 10-year NFL career.

“I’m going to probably tell my kids about this,” said Ramsey, who had three career sacks entering Sunday’s game. “I played in a game with T.J. Watt and Myles Garrett, and I had two sacks. That’s crazy.”

Standing near Ramsey in the locker room after the game, safety DeShon Elliott validated — and ribbed — his 30-year-old teammate.

“He’s a potential gold jacket,” Elliott said. “You kind of expect those things from somebody like that. When it happens, though, you’re like dang, especially when I saw him track the quarterback down from one side, run to the other side. I didn’t know his old self still had it. I didn’t know he had that speed on him still.

“But no, he’s a dog. I expect it out of him, but we’ve got a lot more to go, so it’ll be fun.”

Ramsey was a key contributor in the Steelers’ most complete defensive performance of the season, and he’s a major piece of a surging, finally healthy unit that has Pittsburgh (4-1, 1-0) with a two-game lead in the AFC North through six weeks.

“We’re all playing together, playing fast and physical,” Elliott said. “When we’re a physical defense, we really can’t be stopped. We just got to keep playing sound defense, communicate, and right now we’re not a top-five defense, but we will be by the end of the season.”

That Ramsey was even active for Sunday’s game was improbable — and revealed even more about his gritty demeanor, too. The versatile defender didn’t practice Wednesday or Thursday after sustaining a hamstring injury late in the win against the Minnesota Vikings prior to the Steelers’ bye week. He fully practiced Friday and was initially listed as questionable for the game. But after a Saturday morning walk-through, Ramsey’s status was upgraded. Though he was taken off the injury report, Ramsey was on a pitch count Sunday, coach Mike Tomlin said.

“We certainly wanted to make sure that he could impact the game,” Tomlin said. “I cannot say enough about Jalen Ramsey. This guy plays outside corner, he plays nickel, he plays free safety. He is exactly what we hoped he would be and certainly he was significant today.”

Ramsey’s decision to play is especially notable with the Steelers set to face the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video) following Sunday’s division-opening win.

“I’ve been around the game a long time,” Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said, “and I’ve seen a lot of guys in a situation where you got a Sunday [game and a] Thursday [game], skip both games where maybe they’re 80 percent, 85 percent, but they want to be a hundred percent, because I think there’s a fear of failure almost that they can paralyze them, where if I don’t play my best game then what does that say about me if I’m not a hundred percent?

“For Jalen to go out there with everything he’s accomplished in this league, I just can’t say enough about the level of respect I have for him. … If there was any question about the type of person that he is, take away the incredible player, but person and teammate, I think he just showed all of us the kind of guy that he is by going out there and playing today.”

Not only did Ramsey record two sacks, but he also had six tackles and played 58 defensive snaps (77.3%). Ramsey was key to the Steelers’ blitz-happy defense that kept the rookie quarterback from finding any kind of rhythm in his first stateside start. The Steelers blitzed Gabriel 21 times on 58 dropbacks (36%), according to ESPN Research. And while Gabriel was 12-of-17 for 100 yards on those blitzes, he also took four sacks, including the pair from Ramsey.

“It’s always on the plate, I guess you could say,” Ramsey said when asked if it was the plan going in for him to blitz as much as he did. “In my various roles and things that I play throughout the game, I never count it out, but I wouldn’t say that it was the exact plan.”

As a team, the Steelers held the Browns to three field goals and recorded six sacks, matching their total from the Week 4 win against the Minnesota Vikings. It marked the first time since the 2017 season the Steelers recorded at least seven total sacks in back-to-back games, per ESPN Research. The Steelers also limited the Browns’ run game to 65 yards on 17 carries for an average of 3.8 yards per carry.

“It takes some time to mesh, to come together,” Steelers edge rusher Nick Herbig said. “I think that we’re all starting to figure each other out and playing off each other and playing with a lot of energy out there together. It’s great to see that all come to fruition.”

Though the defense was slow to produce the results expected of the league’s highest paid unit early in the season, Ramsey has been an impact player in his five games with the Steelers since being traded by the Miami Dolphins in June.

In addition to Sunday’s sacks, Ramsey also has an interception this season and nearly had a fumble recovery returned for a touchdown in Dublin, Ireland that was called back when a Vikings player was ruled to have touched the ball when he was out of bounds, ending the play. He also had a truck-stick tackle of Garrett Wilson to seal the Steelers’ Week 1 win against the New York Jets.

“That guy’s a dog,” Herbig said. “I grew up watching him when he was at Florida State, so he’s been doing this since, since I’ve been watching football, and just seeing that in person, seeing how he goes about his business day in and day out, on and off the field, that guy’s a true professional, true vet.

“He’s a leader and an inspiration to a lot of guys, and he’s great for us.”