The dirt continues to surface in the wake of the Maxx Crosby trade, and there’s clear evidence that the relationship between the Las Vegas Raiders and their star defensive and wasn’t all flowers and sunshine. The Raiders have been labeled the villains in this story for being so inept and dysfunctional, but Crosby played a role in this saga that wasn’t always so positive.
Vic Tafur of The Athletic did an account of how it all went down revealed more intriguing details, saying that the “glimmer in Crosby’s eyes” first started to fade back in 2023. The Raiders won five of their last nine games under interim coach Antonio Pierce, and Crosby brought cigars in the locker room after games to celebrate the wins.
Pierce was still likely to get the gate after the season, but according to Tafur, owner Mark Davis didn’t exactly appreciate Crosby’s thinly-veiled threats that on his podcast that he’d request a trade if Pierce wasn’t given the head-coaching job going forward.
Davis and Crosby didn’t speak for months after that, Tafur added, and Pierce quickly proved that he wasn’t ready to be a head coach. Add in a falling out between Pierce and receiver Davante produced a familiar result for fans who followed the team this season as he Silver and Black proceeded to lost 12 of 14 games.
The next hire brought in GM John Spytek and coach Pete Carroll, and the pair was an obvious mismatch from the start. Carroll continued to go with veterans to try to save his job when things went sideways, and younger players had to watch without developing, according to Tafur.
The rest of the story is fairly well-known at this point. The Raiders shut Crosby down for the last two games of the season due to medical issues, and the defensive end stormed out of the facility. That completely broke what was already a fractured relationship, until the trade to the Baltimore Ravens for a pair of number one picks finally became inevitable.
But was tanking the real reason for Crosby’s anger? Most star players like Crosby have a boatload of clauses in their contracts for snap counts, games played, Pro Bowl and All-Pro achievements and so on.
Those clauses often add up to several million dollars for stars like Crosby, and it’s fair to ask whether this might have been at least part of the reason for Crosby’s anger when at least one or two of them became unattainable. We’ll never know for sure, but one thing we do know is that Crosby will make up for anything he might have lost during his next contract negotiations with the Ravens.