Albert Breer on Maxx Crosby’s Future, Best Coaching Hires, NFL Bans Annual Report Cards

I don't think that he has completely closed the book yet.

All right.

Welcome in.

It is the Breer Report for February 16th.

It is President's Day, and this is a little bit of a quiet week in the NFL.

The Super Bowl is a week in the rearview mirror.

The combine is still a week off, although we're creeping closer to that.

We will start to hear about some player moves later in the week, likely with some decisions on whether players will be cut.

Names potentially being traded.

That, of course, will ramp up when we all get to Indianapolis.

And that's actually where we're gonna start this week with one of the biggest names out there and one that's been discussed a lot in the weeks since the Super Bowl, and that is a name that could be traded this offseason, and that is Raiders defensive end.

Max Crosby.

Now, Crosby's contract is tradable , considering the type of player he is.

He's still just 28 years old.

He will be 29, um during the 2026 season.

There is some injury history there, but nothing but debilitating.

He's finished the last 3 years with injuries.

And so there's plenty to consider here.

And I don't think that he has completely closed the book yet on playing for the Las Vegas Raiders.

Now, to understand where we are, you gotta go back to December, and this is stuff that we've been saying since the, since December.

There was a communication breakdown and a communication issue regarding the knee injury that he initially suffered all the way back in October.

He played through that knee injury.

It got to the point from a pain management standpoint where they felt like they had to get additional scans on it.

Those scans happened on December 23rd, and then later that week, the Raiders informed Crosby, and this is where the communication issue came in.

But they would plan, they would be planning on shutting him down for the rest of the year.

Crosby felt like that was an effort to go after the first overall pick.

There was a confrontation on December the twenty-sixth, the day after Christmas, um, and Crosby quote unquote stormed off from the Raiders facility.

Um, and since then, the communication has been relatively scant.

So then you get to the last couple of weeks, they make the decision to hire Clint Kubiak.

Clint Kubiak comes in and one of the first things he does.

As he goes and gets a cup of coffee the other morning with Max Crosby.

My understanding is that that breakfast went really well, um, that there was a good rapport between Clint Kubiak and Max Crosby, um, the new head coach and his highest profile player, but that nothing really materially changed.

Now, since then, Kubiak has made the decision to name Rob Leonard, who was the defensive line coach of the running team coordinator last year, Max Crosby's position coach.

The new defensive coordinator of the Raiders.

So could that move the needle?

We'll see.

I think there's still a lot to be worked out here and really this is gonna have to happen, as I've mentioned a couple of times over the course of the last week at the highest levels of the organization.

So, where does Tom Brady stand in this?

Where does Alex Guerrero stand in this?

Where does John Spytek stand in this?

Where's the communication there to the player?

Does Max Crosby still feel as strongly as he did?

A couple of weeks ago when I think he had almost mentally detached himself from, from playing for the Raiders anymore.

Um , and remember, this is a guy who puts great value in being a Raider.

He's always wanted to be a one, a one-team guy, as rare as those are in today's NFL, he's always wanted to be a one-team guy and has a really, really strong relationship with Mark Davis.

And That relationship is really what's part of what's kept Crosby on board as a Raider.

When you've got that strong relationship with the owner, you want to do right by the owner, you want to help the owner win, and that can be a motivating factor not to have wandering eyes.

But now that he has had those wandering eyes, what does that look like?

I think over a quarter of the league has already sort of sniffed around the possibility of, of could we make a trade for Max Crosby.

I do think there are teams out there, including the two that were in the Super Bowl, that would have an interest in looking at bringing in Max Crosby.

Um, the idea of adding Max Crosby would obviously be enticing to a lot of teams, and the Raiders could bring back a big haul.

And maybe do even a little bit more now to put young players around what everybody expects to be the number one overall pick, Fernando Mendoza, the Indiana quarterback.

How all this looks going forward, I think it's still very gray.

We don't have a ton of black and white on whether or not he'll be traded, who he'll be traded to.

Do the Raiders look at trading him out of the conference?

That's something a lot of teams will do rather than within the AFC.

Would Tom Brady even entertain the idea of trading him to the Patriots?

I, I think Crosby would have an.

Have, uh, have at least some desire potentially to play for Mike Vrabel.

He knows Josh McDaniels, the offensive coordinator there who wouldn't be coaching him directly but was with him in Vegas.

Um, the Seahawks, would they make sense?

Um, the Seahawks, if you remember, you go back to the Legion of Boom era, when they were in that championship window, they were very aggressive about going and getting veterans.

They went and got Percy Harvin, they went and got Cliff Avril, they went and got Michael Bennett.

They continued to try to, to, to, to, to, to enhance the team they had while they were in that window.

It would be no surprise to see John Schneider uh make a move and certainly, I think Max Crosby would be a good fit in any defense, but Mike McDonald's defense in particular.

So lots to sort out there.

The plan for now is for Crosby's camp and the Raiders to sit down at the combine.

Those sorts of meetings are routine in Indianapolis, and then maybe coming out of that meeting, we'll have a better idea on where everybody stands.

All right, our second topic for today.

And I almost feel like I'm telling, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be giving a eulogy here for the NFLPA report cards, which I think, you know, Even like with all the other stuff aside, all the, all the, all the jokes that everybody got off about, you know, floorboards coming up in the in the cafeteria or in the weight room and the cafeteria, charging players after hours, um, there was.

A real functionality to what the NFLPA was doing and giving players the chance to hold their bosses accountable and to hold the teams that employ them accountable .

There are very few ways to do that, but this is the way to do it, and it seemed to really work.

And, you know, to, to give you guys an idea of where these players are coming from.

Before the NIL era in college football, there was very much an arms race.

Um, and the way the arms race worked was how do you put the best staff together, how do you create the best facilities?

How do you spend all this money that we're not spending on the players to create a situation that's gonna be attractive to players.

So, these players, in a lot of cases, the, the, the, the ones that at least that are coming from the, the, the big football schools.

had been working in palaces in college.

And then a lot of those guys come to the NFL and the NFL teams don't have the same sort of motivation to, to, to build out their, their facilities and to spend the way the college teams do on these sorts of things.

And they're kind of like, what the hell is this?

And so, you know, then they have the opportunity to, to, to, to hold their bosses accountable for what's being built there.

And a lot of them are looking at it and saying, well, this is a step down from what I had when I was 19 years old.

And so, are the NFL owners, are the NFL teams giving their players the very best?

I think the answer very clearly was no.

And that was reflected in the NFLPA report cards.

And so, what happened last week, more or less, the NFL won a grievance that against the NFLPA that making the report cards public, making the results of the public report cards public.

was disparaging to the clubs, disparaging to the owners, which violated certain terms of the CBA.

So they win that grievance, so the NFLPA can no longer make those report cards public.

Well, why does that matter?

That matters because these conditions, these complaints always existed.

It was the public embarrassment, the PR issue that these report cards caused the teams that caused the owners that created some change.

Arizona and New England didn't do very well on these the last couple of years.

Those teams are building entirely new practice facilities.

Nine-figure projects are being put together in part at least because of the owners looking at this and saying, well, Uh, we, we can't have this.

Like the, the, this is, this is, this is creating an image problem for my team.

This is creating an image problem for me personally.

We can't have this.

And so they're going and buy, building entirely new practice facilities in the aftermath of taking a beating on these player report cards.

So, it's a shame that this is sort of what the owners have circled and decided that was a bridge too far in our relationship.

with the players.

I, I think they did a lot of good.

There were teams that did incredibly well on them, um, the Vikings, the Dolphins, even the Raiders, like recently with some of the new stuff that they've built in Vegas, but these, the, the, the teams that have really taken care of their players have benefited from the report cards, but the ones that didn't do as well, had a huge problem with it.

So you had the grievance filed, and now this can't be public anymore with a caveat .

The caveat here is that the NFLPA.

The NFLPA can still run this project, and they can still distribute the report card to the players, and there are around 2000 NFL players.

And so if 2000 NFL players have their hands on this, that's however many agents that represent them.

The amount of people that are going to have access to these.

Makes it pretty unlikely that the results won't in some way become public.

So it's possible that this just winds up being a, a win from an arbitrator that doesn't have the effect that the owners hope it will.

We'll see on that.

We should, should know in the next few weeks or so.

Finally, uh, topic number 3, the coaching carousel is now complete.

We have 10 new Head coaches in the NFL, which is a really high number.

So just a couple of winners, I thought we could go through to close out this edition of the Brewer Report and close out the whole week for the Brewer Report.

We'll get to that in a second.

Um, I think the first bucket of winners, the first two winners are the teams that won competitive situations that went in and had guys that as targets that everyone wanted to go after that everyone wanted a piece of, and they wound up winning the Derby.

One's the New York Giants.

And given um everything that's happening with the ownership group there, obviously a really tough situation from a health standpoint for John Mara, and Steve Tisch shows up in the Epstein, Epstein files.

They, they need a leader in that building.

They need somebody who can galvanize the football operation, and John Harbaugh is certainly that.

So not only do they win a very competitive derby for John Harbaugh.

This is also exactly what the team needs in this, in this moment in time.

And so getting John Harbaugh, I believe, is a massive win for the New York Giants.

I'd say the same thing for the Atlanta Falcons with Kevin Stefanski.

Stefansky was almost as heavily pursued as Harbaugh was.

And when you're talking about building out a new setup there, and you've got Matt Ryan in his first executive job as the president of football, and I think he's gonna be good at it, but there's a learning curve that comes with that.

And Ian Cunningham coming in as a first-time GM having a guy who has all the experience that Kevin Stefansky got in Cleveland.

Again, this is sort of one of those, yes, you won the Derby, but Kevin Stefansky is also just what the doctor ordered there.

So, those two winners, the Giants and Falcons are winners because I believe, looking at that, looking at where they're at, like you can say, not only is, was that a competitive situation where you win the press conference because you beat out other teams to get these guys.

You're also getting exactly what the franchise needs in the moment.

So that's the first bucket.

The 2nd bucket of winners, Jesse Minter going to the Baltimore Ravens, Jeff Hafley going to the Miami Dolphins.

The reason why I like these hires is because these were competitive situations.

And they were competitive situations where both those guys interviewed well a bunch of different places.

And those guys are being plucked from a pipeline that I think has been, has been underutilized.

And we've seen the NFL teams over the course of the, of the almost decade now since Kyle Shanahan was hired in San Francisco and Sean McVeigh was hired in Los Angeles, pumping and pumping and pumping that young offensive coach pipeline and trying to find the next guy.

And we've gotten to the point now where that, that pipeline's almost been pumped dry.

And you've had so many guys that were hired, got some of those guys fired and thrown back into the pipeline that you eventually get to the point where, like, all right, like what are we looking at now?

And, you know, Grant Udinsky, Nathan Shieldhouse, those guys I think are really good young coaches.

Are they ready yet?

Have they had the level of responsibility that will prepare them for being the head coach for being a head coach yet?

And yet those guys are getting interviews in part because there aren't a ton of names out there.

Um, there aren't a ton of, a ton of, a ton of names out there that, that makes sense the same way a McVeigh or Shanahan would have 9 years ago when those guys first became head coaches.

So, what's the smart thing to do then?

If that pipeline is dry, what's the pipeline that hasn't been pumped quite as much?

And that to me is the defensive coach pipeline.

So, Halley and Minor, I think were really good hires for the Dolphins and the Ravens, and I'm excited to see where those two go.

And then one final one.

And this one, I think, because of the way the Raiders went about it, we started with the Raiders today, we'll finish with the Raiders.

And because of what it was at the end.

And again, this is going back to that young offensive coach pipeline.

But Clint Kubiak, I think, becoming the head coach of the Raiders, one, they did have to beat out another team to get him.

They beat out the Arizona Cardinals to get him.

And 2, I think Clint Kubiak really wanted the challenge of being a Raider, and that to me is such a, a, a, a huge piece of it and was a huge piece of it for the Raiders in their search.

They didn't just want somebody who wanted to be a head coach, yeah, they're one of 32, I want to be a head coach.

They want somebody who would come in and attack that challenge, and who would embrace the history of the franchise.

And that's what they feel like Clint Kubiak was doing in the 2, in the 2 interviews they did with him.

And on top of that, and I think this part's really cool, and I got this sense just being around Clint the last few weeks.

I think Clint was borderline uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Because he felt like his focus should be on the Seahawks, and he felt like going into the NFC title game, even going into the divisional playoffs, when he was interviewing for jobs before the divisional playoff against the Niners.

His players deserved his very best, and he owed it to his players to give them the best chance to get the very best result.

And that sort of approach may have left him a little less prepared for the first round of interviews, but he was genuine about it and the Raiders sensed that.

But what it did was it gave his team a chance to compete for a championship.

It let the Raiders and Cardinals see who he really was.

And in the end, the Raiders added that to the piece they had with, yes, he wants to be here, he wants this challenge, he wants.

To have the first overall pick and use that as a change agent for where we hope to go, and everybody's expecting that to be Fernando Mendoza.

He wants to develop the young quarterback and he wants to make this something of his own, and something that's respectful to the, that, that , that's, that's, that, that, that, that connects to the, the history of the franchise, which is a storied history of that franchise.

Um, I really like the hire of Clint Kubiak in Vegas.

So there are, there are 3 groups of winners for you.

Appreciate you guys coming out.

I'm off to go skiing with my family this week, so there will be no more re reports for the rest of the week.

But next week, we're gonna have wall to wall coverage of the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

Yes, we are already there.

It is already draft season.

And of course, we're taking all of your feedback like we always do.

So anything you want to see this offseason, free agency draft, even stuff you might want to see us give you from the combine there in Indianapolis, you can leave your comments down below here on the YouTube page or you can get to me on my social media at Albert Breer on Twitter, at Albert R.

Breer on Facebook, at Albert_Breer on Instagram.

Appreciate you guys coming out and we will see you next week.