Why Sitting Maxx Crosby Isn’t Tanking—and the Right Move for the Raiders

Las Vegas may have kickstarted the process of exploring a trade for its star edge rusher, and franchise leadership would be wise to learn lessons from the past.

The Raiders shut down Maxx Crosby for the final two games of the season, setting the stage for a potential separation between the franchise and its star edge rusher. / Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Let’s begin by countering a popular talking point as the Raiders methodically shut down their best players—Maxx Crosby and Brock Bowers—ahead of a penultimate game against the Giants that could very well determine the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft: the Raiders aren’t tanking. At least not in the eyes of the NFL historically. 

Crosby may have been upset enough about the news to vacate the Raiders’ facility—news that Pete Carroll confirmed Friday. And while sitting to avoid further injury or to make the team systematically worse may be against his personal warrior code of ethics, the league has drawn a very flimsy and nebulous line when it comes to penalizing a team for purposely losing games. The Browns, for example, rewarded Hue Jackson with cash bonuses for having a set number of picks in the first three rounds, having one of the lowest percentages of cash spend carryover and having one of the youngest rosters in the NFL—factors that do not explicitly lay out a desire to lose games on purpose but certainly provide an ingredient list to do so. The NFL conducted an investigation and cleared the Browns. 

The Eagles pulled Jalen Hurts in 2021 during Sunday Night Football in favor of Nate Sudfeld with a clear desire to improve their pick in the draft a few months later. The NFL didn’t investigate at all, and Philadelphia ended up with an improved pick package that went on to power two Super Bowl teams over the course of three seasons. This was roundly celebrated by NFL media, which lauded Howie Roseman for his foresight. The Eagles were never investigated. 

So now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s join in the chorus of another popular talking point as it pertains to the Raiders and Crosby. The team should absolutely trade him, having digested critical lessons from both the Browns and the Cowboys. 

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Here’s what we mean by that. The Cowboys got a package for Micah Parsons that was a little worse than the one the Jets got for Jamal Adams. Much of this is because the Cowboys waited until just before the start of the season instead of effectively auctioning off the pick before the draft when teams were flush with capital, more flexible from a salary cap standpoint and under more pressure to make a splash. Jerry Jones can provide all of the strange timelines he wishes, but the fact of the matter was that he didn’t care for a player returning serve on his famous, history-bending orations that make him look like the undefeated genius. Jones was breaking NFL rules and failing to operate in good faith. Parsons let people know. Jones hit the eject button. 

The Browns didn’t get a package for Myles Garrett at all because the team opted to sign the veteran pass rusher to a market-topping extension. And while Garrett may end up setting the all-time single-season NFL sack record in a Browns uniform this weekend, that honor was hardly worth more than $120 million guaranteed. Garrett will be 30 in just a few days and the Browns’ offense is no closer to matching the efficacy of its defense. Cleveland needs answers at multiple anchor positions and went into Sunday as the worst offense in the NFL in terms of EPA per play and down-by-down success percentage (a metric that tracks how well the Browns do on each down in order to advance toward a new set of downs). 

Crosby has 10 sacks in 15 games this season. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

Saying this, of course, doesn’t represent an approval of the Parsons trade (my opinion remains steadfast). But it does recognize that certain relationships will sour to the point where the time it takes to rectify them will eclipse the remainder of a player’s prime. Parsons is just 26 and absolutely worth fighting for. Crosby will turn 29 before the start of next season and his contract is very tradable. Executing a Crosby deal after the start of the league year, according to OverTheCap, results in just $5 million in dead cap for the Raiders in 2026 and saves the team more than $30 million.  

Crosby, unlike Garrett, doesn’t seem to be as easily persuaded by the corporate line. (Garrett famously said before this season that the Browns pitched him on a plan for the team’s future which he agreed with.) As the Raiders clearly try to tear this organization down to the studs and build it into something distinctly unlike the locker room that has born and bred Crosby, it’s obviously more valuable for Las Vegas to have a combination of high draft picks to spend on players who will fit the vision of Tom Brady and John Spytek. 

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In asking around about the Raiders’ head coaching vacancy before the Carroll hiring, one item from a league source continues to resonate with me: Las Vegas does not seem like a team that knows what it wants just yet. The team initially wanted a coordinator dream team, with Robert Saleh behind Pete Carroll as an obvious successor and Chip Kelly as the CEO of the offense. Kelly has since been fired. Saleh never came aboard and the main selling point for Carroll is that he can continue operating with some semblance of professionalism until the Raiders decide what the team will actually look like next year and beyond. 

That doesn’t sound like a team that needs Maxx Crosby more than franchise-altering draft capital. 

So no, the Raiders aren’t tanking. But they are making business decisions. And sitting Crosby is one business decision that should lead to trading him.

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