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Bill Barnwell
Multiple Authors
If you purchased a purple and gold Maxx Crosby jersey over the weekend, you might be experiencing buyer’s remorse. The team that stunningly traded for Crosby on Friday night appears like it might have had some, too. Four days after agreeing to send two first-round picks to the Raiders to acquire the star edge rusher, the Ravens apparently pulled out of the Crosby deal on Tuesday evening, reportedly over concerns about his physical.
The Raiders announced the news in the way you might have posted on your Facebook wall about a breakup as a teenager. “The Baltimore Ravens have backed out of our trade agreement for Maxx Crosby,” the brief statement on social media said. “We will have no further comment at this time.”
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While acknowledging that the Raiders are not exactly the most careful and social media-savvy organization in football, it’s very easy to focus on the wording they put in that brief message. They could have noted that Crosby failed a physical and that the trade has been rescinded, or tweeted about how the trade had fallen through and how happy they were to have Crosby back in town. “Backed out” is saying a lot. It’s quite clear that the Raiders feel like they’ve been done dirty by what happened here.
What happens next? Well, let’s get there in a moment. I want to break down what’s happened here from both sides, and then we can get to what it means for the Ravens, Raiders, Crosby and the rest of the NFL. The only thing more interesting than the original Crosby trade might be undoing one of the biggest swaps of the past decade four days later. Let’s try to make some sense of this and what comes next.
Jump to:
What happened?
Did the Ravens get cold feet?
Will Crosby still get moved?
Where could he fit?
Who else is impacted?
What happened here?
Let’s start with the simple facts. Every NFL signing and trade is subject to a physical. Nothing’s official until players pass those physicals. Obviously, each team’s comfort with the wear and tear that they see on football players depends on a variety of factors. Nobody’s going to pass a physical with a torn ACL, but teams might be more willing to overlook concerns if they’re signing a 35-year-old veteran to the minimum for a playoff run in December than they are if they’re signing a player to a massive contract in March.
In this case, the Ravens were obviously facing a very important, franchise-altering decision. They were both trading two first-round picks for Crosby and essentially committing to paying the guy who was supposed to be their new star edge rusher nearly $94 million over the next three seasons. Crosby was coming off a season that ended via injury, with the 28-year-old suffering a meniscus injury early in the year and playing through it before eventually undergoing season-ending surgery.
Crosby underwent a meniscus repair as opposed to trimming his meniscus, which matters in a couple of ways. A meniscus trim allows a player to recover more quickly than a repair, but teams I’ve spoken to in the past about these injuries generally believe that trims create more complications down the line and shorten careers in the long term. Meniscus repairs require longer recovery times, but they’re more likely to produce stable knees after recovery and fewer deleterious long-term effects than the trims. Crosby might very well still be recovering from the surgery he underwent at the end of the 2025 season given the typical timeframe.
The timing of the trade only made things worse. Both sides wanted to have a Crosby deal done before the weekend and the start of the legal negotiating period on Monday. The Raiders were in position to negotiate with the widest range of teams before free agents started flying off the board and teams filled their needs on the edge. The Ravens needed clarity on what their budget would look like with or without Crosby as a number of their standout players hit free agency.
Even though the teams agreed to the trade on Friday, though, the deal couldn’t be officially consummated until the start of the new league year on Wednesday, by which point Crosby would need to pass a physical. That felt like a formality until it wasn’t. If the trade had happened in early April or in the middle of October, the two sides could have gotten the physicals done immediately and finished the deal in a matter of hours if they negotiated quietly enough. Here, there were several days between the decision to make the trade and the decision to undo it, and those happen to be some of the most consequential days of the NFL calendar.
Did the Ravens just get cold feet and back out because they changed their mind?
That’s a $94 million question. You don’t really need to guess what the Raiders are implying happened here. The Ravens knew Crosby was recovering from meniscus surgery. He’s 28 years old, and one of his calling cards as a pro has been playing a staggering number of snaps. Since entering the league in 2019, Crosby has played 6,449 snaps. He has the two highest single-season defensive snap totals of any defensive lineman — having played 1,038 snaps in 2022 and 1,037 in 2023 — and four of the top 21 over the past seven seasons. The Ravens were never going to go into a physical for a player who has worked as hard as Crosby over the past few years and discover that things were perfect.
The Raiders clearly believe that the Ravens are making a meal out of whatever they found and using it as a pretense to change their mind. Is that what actually happened? It would be almost impossible to prove, barring some remarkable smoking gun piece of evidence from inside the Ravens organization. There’s not really any way for the Raiders to hold the Ravens accountable or insist that they follow through on the trade because they’re just pretending Crosby isn’t healthy enough to pass a physical.
While it doesn’t typically happen in high-profile trades, we do see signings impacted and even wiped away by failed physicals. These teams have both had a notable signing fall by the wayside over the past 15 years. In 2017, the Ravens signed Washington wideout Ryan Grant to a four-year, $29 million deal with $14.5 million guaranteed, but a physical discovered that a late-season ankle injury was more concerning than the team expected. Baltimore backed out of the deal.
The Raiders, meanwhile, signed offensive lineman Rodger Saffold to a five-year, $42.5 million contract in the spring of 2014. While that seems like a modest deal nowadays, Saffold’s $8.5 million average salary would have been the most for any guard in football at the time. The deal was widely panned; at the time, I wrote that it was “mind-boggling and impossible to understand.” It was a massive overpay from an organization that wasn’t attracting many free agents to come play in Oakland for a franchise more than a decade removed from their last winning record.
When Saffold came in for his physical, well, the Raiders were the ones who got cold feet. They failed the Rams guard over concerns about his shoulder and opted out of his deal. Saffold went back into free agency and signed a five-year, $31.3 million deal to return to St. Louis. The Raiders eventually used a third-round pick on Gabe Jackson and slotted him in at left guard instead.
For what it’s worth, both teams probably had a point. Saffold underwent surgery on the shoulder that concerned the Raiders after the 2014 season and lasted only five games in 2015 before requiring season-ending surgery on the other shoulder. Grant responded to his Ravens rejection by signing a one-year, $5 million deal with the Colts, but he caught just 39 more pro passes over the next two years before falling out of the league. You could make a case that both the Raiders and Ravens made prudent decisions at the time, even if they weren’t popular choices.
There are three reasons why I don’t believe that the Ravens pretended to use the physical as a pretense to opt out of a new deal they no longer wanted to make. One is the reaction to the news. While there were people who didn’t really love the Crosby trade — myself included — there was no widespread backlash or suggestion that the Ravens had been fleeced. This was generally a popular trade with Ravens fans. If this were a wildly unpopular deal that made the Ravens national laughingstocks, there might be some reason to believe that general manager Eric DeCosta and the Baltimore front office would have given it a second thought. That wasn’t the case here.
Another is that undoing the trade complicates the short- and long-term for the Ravens organizationally. Baltimore players were excited about playing with Crosby. Fans were thrilled to add a superstar. They’re all disappointed now. Even if they don’t believe that the Ravens just changed their mind, teams are going to be more hesitant to talk trades with Baltimore given the perception that it might be more finicky about physicals and prone to reversing deals than other organizations. That wouldn’t stop the Ravens if they really felt like the Crosby deal, the biggest one they’d make over the next decade, would have been a disaster given his health, but it’s not going to make life easier for Baltimore moving forward.
And the third reason is the Ravens essentially sat out the first few days of free agency as they waited for the Crosby deal to be finalized, with their only signing so far being guard John Simpson. While there’s a Trey Hendrickson-sized elephant in the room as an alternative to the Crosby deal, the Ravens aren’t assured of landing the Bengals star. Even if they do sign Hendrickson — and especially if they don’t — the Ravens would have wanted to be more active in free agency over the weekend without the possibility of paying Crosby more than $30 million per year hanging over their heads.
Instead, the Ravens lost a handful of meaningful contributors, led by star center Tyler Linderbaum, who signed with these very Raiders. Isaiah Likely left for the Giants, and he was followed by Jordan Stout, Ar’Darius Washington, and Patrick Ricard. Dre’Mont Jones signed with the Patriots. Alohi Gilman joined the Chiefs. Charlie Kolar went to the Chargers. The Ravens probably weren’t going to sign Linderbaum given that massive contract number in Vegas, but they very well might have been more competitive on young players like Kolar or Likely if they had more financial flexibility, let alone looking toward other options in free agency.
At the end of the day, nobody outside of Baltimore’s building can ever really know for sure whether the Ravens were strictly reacting to Crosby’s physical, simply changed their mind or some combination of the two. I would argue that the preponderance of the evidence points toward the former. If the Ravens do sign Hendrickson Wednesday afternoon, though, you’ll understand why conspiracy theories will be spreading like wildfire around the NFL.
0:39
Raiders: Ravens ‘backed out’ of trade for Crosby
Raiders: Ravens ‘backed out’ of trade for Crosby
Can a Crosby trade still happen?
With Crosby’s rights reverting back to the Raiders and the Ravens recouping their two first-round picks, both teams can act like this trade never happened. Having already traded Crosby away once, though, the Raiders should still be incentivized to get a deal done as quickly as possible. While he could theoretically come back and play for another decade in the desert, it’s difficult to imagine either side feeling particularly thrilled about a reunion.
The Raiders needed the picks more than they needed Crosby, given how far away they are from contending. Crosby was going to finally get to play for a winner and a perennial contender. This could have been a win-win trade.
What are the alternatives? Let’s lay out a few potential scenarios for what a new Crosby trade could look like:
1. The Raiders and Ravens could agree to another trade with new terms. The simplest way to resolve this fiasco would be to send Crosby to the Ravens with a less significant package heading back to the Raiders. The Ravens could send a first-round pick and a Day 2 selection instead of two first-rounders. They could send a conditional pick that becomes a first-rounder if Crosby hits a snap or game threshold in 2026. The Raiders could attach a conditional pick in 2028 that goes to the Ravens if Crosby misses time in 2026 and 2027.
On paper, that makes sense. In reality? I’m not sure the Raiders are going to pick up the phone if they see a 410 number show up until 2035 or so. It’s very clear that Mark Davis and Co. feel jilted by what happened here, and it’s difficult to believe that they would be willing to accept anything less than what the Ravens initially offered to get a Crosby deal done for a second time with Baltimore. Doing so might encourage teams to try and change terms on deals with the Raiders in the future. And Las Vegas might not be willing to deal any player to the Ravens on principle for a while, let alone Crosby.
2. Another team trades two first-round picks to the Raiders for Crosby this week. Obviously, the best-case scenario for the Raiders right now would be getting a similar haul from another team which doesn’t share the same concerns with the Ravens about Crosby’s medicals. Doing so would both get the Raiders the draft capital they want and implicitly suggest that Las Vegas was right to suggest that the Ravens backed out of the trade for reasons unrelated to the physical.
It’s possible that this gets done. If the Ravens were willing to ship off two first-round picks to trade for Crosby, there were likely other teams that were willing to come close or even match that offer but just pick later in the first round of the 2026 draft than the Ravens (who were sending the 14th overall selection in the tentative swap). Landing a new deal with a team picking in the 20s wouldn’t be quite as appealing, but it would be close enough for the Raiders to feel good about moving Crosby out.
It’s going to be tougher to do this deal now than it would have been a week ago, though. I’ll get to who might be interested in trading for Crosby in a moment, but teams that felt like they had missed out on the five-time Pro Bowler have already spent some of their resources elsewhere. There won’t be as many franchises in the mix for the Raiders to potentially play off of one another. Knowing that the Raiders were willing to trade Crosby last week, Vegas won’t have the same sort of leverage it had before Friday.
There will also be general managers and owners with serious questions about whether the Ravens were right. Trading two first-round picks for a soon-to-be 29-year-old making significant money who couldn’t pass a physical is going to be a very risky proposition for any executive. Even if another team doesn’t share the same medical concerns about Crosby on closer inspection, there will be questions in the building about what the Ravens saw and whether there’s something that should be spooking any new Crosby suitor. Teams know this and will try to lowball the Raiders in their potential offers as a result.
3. Another team trades two first-round picks to the Raiders for Crosby sometime in the months to come. This is unlikely, but it’s possible that Crosby’s meniscus looks better closer to the draft or even afterwards, leading a team to feel more comfortable shipping off two first-round picks. If another team waits until after the draft, it could acquire Crosby in 2026 and hold onto its first-round pick this year while sending their 2027 and 2028 first-rounders to the Raiders, which would be a less valuable and more uncertain offer for Vegas.
4. Another team trades a 2026 first-round pick and something that isn’t a 2027 first-round pick to the Raiders to acquire Crosby. This is the most likely scenario to me. It’s going to be very difficult for the Raiders to land a similarly-sized offer to the one they had on the board from Baltimore over the weekend. Too many teams that would have been interested are out of the running, so much money has been spent elsewhere, and the teams left will either be nervous about Crosby’s knee or use the threat of those nerves to bring the trade price down.
At this point, the previously-agreed Ravens offer is mostly irrelevant in terms of negotiating. Vegas general manager John Spytek has to go back to the table and land the best possible deal for Crosby right now. Can the Raiders land a top-15 pick and a third-rounder? A late first-rounder in 2026 and a couple of Day 2 picks over the next couple of years? Will they have to settle for a late first-round pick in 2026 and a second-rounder in 2027? A deal in that ballpark seems realistic to me, even given the concerns about Crosby’s physical.
5. Another team acquires Crosby without needing to send a first-round pick. If Crosby’s medicals are really as concerning as the Ravens suggest, there might not be a first-round pick in play for the Raiders star. There’s always a price point where a team would be willing to take a shot on a player of Crosby’s talent, but teams have already typically been loathe to pay premiums to acquire players as they approach 30. Anyone sending a first-round pick to acquire Crosby is hoping that they’re landing a player who can make an impact on this contract and on a second deal into his mid-30s.
At that point, though, I have to believe that the Raiders would simply call things off. The organization seemed ready to move Crosby, but this wasn’t a situation where the Raiders were going to be willing to simply take the best available offer if what was on the table wasn’t any better than a Day 2 pick. It was always going to take some sort of premium for the Raiders to move their most popular and successful player.
It would be awkward welcoming Crosby back, but if the Raiders can’t land a first-round pick, they would have to bring their veteran edge rusher back into the fold for 2026. They could always explore a trade at the deadline or after the season if Crosby returns to his usual form and plays well next year.
At some point, Crosby’s value will drop. Panthers fans will remember Carolina turning down two first-round picks from the Rams for Brian Burns before they eventually accepted a second-round pick from the Giants for their star edge rusher, but that process took a couple of years. If Crosby’s still on the Raiders roster in 2027 or 2028, Vegas might not be in position to command a first-round pick. For now, though, I can’t imagine the Raiders sending Crosby away without landing at least one first-round pick in return.
Which teams would be interested in trading for Crosby?
It might be more meaningful to start the teams who wouldn’t be as interested as they were a week ago. That list starts with the Cowboys, who sent a fourth-round pick to the Packers to acquire Rashan Gary after missing out on a Crosby trade. Gary’s making $18 million in 2026. There are rumors that the Cowboys are listening on offers for defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa, and trading the 27-year-old tackle would free up $16.75 million in cash. Dallas still has plenty of draft capital, but even after trading Odighizuwa, it would be difficult to pay Crosby, Gary, Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark up front on defense before even considering how much this team has committed to the offensive stars.
Teams that made a big splash on edge rushing talent aren’t likely to be in the Crosby sweepstakes, either. The Panthers just gave Jaelan Phillips $30 million per season. The Commanders paid Odafe Oweh $25 million per year. The Bengals might have considered Crosby as a Hendrickson replacement, but they’re now on the hook to give Boye Mafe $20 million per year. The Patriots only gave Dre’Mont Jones $12.5 million, but that locks him in to start across from Harold Landry III. Other long-shot options, like the 49ers, Saints and Seahawks, have spent significant money elsewhere. And while the Chiefs could use a star edge rusher, well, I don’t see the Raiders trading Crosby inside their own division.
Who’s left? There’s no obvious frontrunner, but then again, the Ravens weren’t exactly the favorites to land Crosby a week ago, either. In no particular order …
The Jaguars were reportedly in Crosby discussions earlier this offseason, only to come up short of Baltimore’s offer. They don’t have a first-round pick to offer the Raiders in 2026 after sending that to the Browns in the deal to move up for Travis Hunter, and that likely cost them in relation to other offers and opportunities.
What the Jaguars do have, though, is young talent that might be appealing to the Raiders. If the Jaguars did trade for Crosby, his spot in the lineup would likely come at the expense of former first-round pick Travon Walker, who will be entering his fifth-year option in 2026 before hitting unrestricted free agency. Walker’s coming off a disappointing 3.5-sack year, but his underlying metrics have been more consistent than his sack totals, and he would step in as a meaningful replacement for Crosby on the edge.
The other Jaguars player who would undoubtedly interest the Raiders is wideout Brian Thomas Jr., who would give presumptive first-overall pick Fernando Mendoza a young No. 1 receiver. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Tuesday that the Jaguars aren’t interested in trading Thomas, but the Crosby news could change things. If the Raiders prefer picks, though, the Jaguars aren’t going to be a great fit.
The Lions have been quiet in free agency, with former Panthers center Cade Mays as their only meaningful addition at the moment. Al-Quadin Muhammad and Marcus Davenport are both free agents, leaving a significant hole across from Aidan Hutchinson on the edge. The Lions have the 17th pick in 2026, which would be in the same ballpark as the selection the Ravens were sending as part of their deal. And I don’t need to tell you how Crosby and Dan Campbell would fit together.
For the Lions, though, they might have bigger concerns elsewhere. Taylor Decker was granted his release, and Detroit’s rebuilding an offensive line that wasn’t up to its standards last season. The 2023 draft class just became eligible for extensions, which could mean significant raises for Jahmyr Gibbs, Jack Campbell, Sam LaPorta and Brian Branch as early as this offseason. I love the fit on paper, but Crosby might be too expensive for Detroit.
The Bills made a big splash by acquiring DJ Moore from the Bears, a deal which added $24.5 million to their bottom line in 2026 and 2027. They still need to rebuild on defense, where Joey Bosa and AJ Epenesa are free agents on the edge. Buffalo’s already committed to Greg Rousseau at one starting spot, but Crosby could step in on the other side, giving Buffalo the star pass rusher it has craved for years.
This doesn’t really feel like a Bills move to me. The attempt to make that all-in move for Von Miller in free agency was a disaster, and GM Brandon Beane shouldn’t be desperate to go down the same path. The Bills arguably have bigger needs along their offensive line and in the secondary, and after sending their second-round pick to the Bears, it’s tough to believe that they would then send their first-round pick and additional future draft capital away for another veteran. After all of the dramatic changes Beane and ownership made following the heartbreaking loss to the Broncos, though, I’m not sure we can rule anything off the table in Buffalo.
The Bears freed up all of that cash as part of the Moore trade. When I wrote my mock trade column last month, I had the Bears shipping Moore to the Raiders as part of a deal for Crosby, using the savings at wideout to help add all the money owed to Crosby over the next three years. I thought the Bears would only need to send one first-rounder alongside Moore to get that deal done, but in light of what the Ravens offered, that seems low.
The Bears already have $37 million invested in their starters on the edge between Montez Sweat and Dayo Odeyingbo, the latter of whom is still recovering from an Achilles injury. General manager Ryan Poles has cleared out cash by trading Moore and releasing Tremaine Edmunds, but the Bears have signed Coby Bryant to a three-year, $40 million deal and made a series of smaller signings. They have the draft capital to make a deal work and a core of young talent on offense that should allow for spending heavily on defense, but are they really ready for an all-in move?
The sexy pick for a Crosby trade would be the Eagles, who let Jaelan Phillips, Nakobe Dean and Reed Blankenship leave before signing Riq Woolen to a one-year deal on Tuesday evening. We know how heavily GM Howie Roseman leans on having great offensive and defensive line play, and the Eagles weren’t great on the edge after losing Josh Sweat last year. Jalyx Hunt had a solid season, but Nolan Smith Jr. mustered only three sacks in an injury-hit campaign, and low-cost additions like Azeez Ojulari and Joshua Uche didn’t make much of an impact.
The Eagles have a ton of money committed to their 2026 roster already, but there’s an obvious trade candidate here in A.J. Brown. Roseman has suggested that the Eagles aren’t in the business of trading away great players, and Brown’s still one of the elite receivers in football on a route-by-route basis, but he seemed to sour on the organization and vice versa a year ago. He would give Mendoza a legitimate No. 1 wideout, and Vegas’ biggest goal in 2026 has to be making their new quarterback’s life as easy as possible.
Financially, a Brown trade really only makes sense after June 1, when the Eagles could push $27 million of the $43 million in dead money that would come from a Brown swap onto their 2027 cap. Fitting Crosby in would require some cap gymnastics, and that defensive line would get very expensive between Crosby, newly-paid tackle Jordan Davis and the massive deal likely coming for Jalen Carter, but that’s a place the Eagles have to be comfortable spending their money.
Is a receiver who turns 29 before the year really the best return for Crosby given how far the Raiders are from contention? Probably not. If they get to June and haven’t been able to get a Crosby deal over the line, though, a swap involving Brown (and some draft capital) heading to the Raiders for him will be the rumor of the summer.
What happens next for the teams and players most directly impacted by the rescinded trade?
Let’s start in Vegas. There have been suggestions that the Raiders might be in a dangerous cap situation after going on an early-market spending spree under the pretense that they weren’t going to have Crosby’s deal on the books. There aren’t many teams that can just add a $35.7 million hit onto their cap unexpectedly right before the start of the new league year and remain cap compliant.
The Raiders, though, are one of those teams. Depending on how some of their new deals are structured, they should have between $30 million and $50 million in cap space, even after adding Crosby’s deal back to their roster. And while they probably won’t want to restructure his contract given the likelihood that he’s dealt again in the weeks to come, the Raiders could clear out $14 million in cap space overnight by restructuring Kolton Miller’s deal and adding void years. There’s not going to be a cap crisis here.
Financially, though, the Raiders are probably overstretched in terms of cash spent. This isn’t the most cash-rich organization in the NFL on an annual basis, and the Raiders probably would not have been as active in free agency if they knew that they might be spending $30.7 million in cash on Crosby in 2026. If Crosby is traded in the weeks to come, that won’t matter, but if the Raiders do have him on their roster this season, I wonder if they might be less active than expected in free agency next year.
Unless there’s something seriously wrong with Crosby’s medical picture, the most likely scenario will see the Raiders trade Crosby again, but this time for something less than two first-round picks. That’s not ideal, but it doesn’t materially change the short-term plan for the Raiders in 2026.
The Ravens are in a difficult situation, albeit one of their own doing. They mostly sat out free agency, and while that was happening, the vast majority of the edge rusher market came off the board. In an ideal world, they would land Hendrickson, the closest comparable to Crosby on this market. While there would be an outcry from Raiders fans if they did, the Ravens would be something close to whole and get to keep their two first-round picks (although they would likely miss out on the third-round compensatory pick they expected to land for Linderbaum).
If they don’t, well, there’s no real substitute available. The Ravens would likely transition from landing one star to adding in bulk. Veterans like Joey Bosa, Haason Reddick and K’Lavon Chaisson are still available, although adding free agents would impact the compensatory pick formula for the Ravens as they try to land some return for losing players like Dre’Mont Jones and Isaiah Likely. DeCosta could sign a couple of those guys and still have money left over relative to what he was about to pay for Crosby, but he also wouldn’t be able to count on similar returns from those alternatives on the field.
Even if the Ravens were willing to ship out two first-round picks for another player, there really isn’t anyone on the market who would justify that sort of deal. Shopping that sort of draft capital will free up a lot of players, but I don’t see a dominant game-wrecker available who is worth making that level of trade.
DeCosta could still use draft capital to try to add NFL players to the mix on the edge, but he wouldn’t be using first-round picks to get there. He could call the Giants about Kayvon Thibodeaux, who will be a free agent next year. The Vikings might need to move Jonathan Greenard for cap purposes. The Dolphins might get talked into a Chop Robinson trade as they rebuild. With Nnamdi Madubuike’s 2026 status uncertain after suffering a neck injury last year, the Ravens might call the Cowboys, who could be ready to move on from Odighizuwa. None of those guys are going to require first-round picks to land, but all of those teams will be asking for premiums on what they might have otherwise hoped to land, knowing that the Ravens are desperate for pass rush help.
Hendrickson probably made himself a lot more money overnight without needing to move a muscle. If you were a team that felt good about your bid for Hendrickson Tuesday afternoon in advance of what’s expected to be a decision by the star edge rusher on Wednesday, the Crosby news changed everything. You have to expect the Ravens to go over the top with an offer. And that’s going to lead those teams that were seriously interested in him to up their own offers before Wednesday.
The Ravens should appeal to Hendrickson, given that they’re a perpetually competitive team and should be willing to pay him as much as any other in the league. Would the Crosby situation, though, give Hendrickson some pause? The 31-year-old has played a ton of snaps himself over the past few years, and he just missed 10 games in 2025 with a hip injury. Would Hendrickson and his representation be concerned that the Ravens would sign the star edge rusher and then see something on a physical they don’t like? If that did happen, would the Ravens be brave enough to rip up a second deal in a matter of days?
0:55
Schrager: Trey Hendrickson to Cowboys ‘does make a lot of sense’
Peter Schrager joins Pat McAfee to discuss what Trey Hendrickson’s free agency market will look like.
If the Ravens don’t land Hendrickson, this will be a great outcome for the AFC North. The Ravens will keep their first-rounders, which is the best thing for them in the long run, but they simultaneously sat out the first few days of free agency, lost a handful of talented young players and kept meaningful cash aside for a player who didn’t end up joining the organization. That’s going to hurt the 2026 roster in Baltimore, making life easier for the Bengals and Steelers as they compete for the divisional crown.
The league’s other contenders might not be in position to add Crosby now, but if the Raiders can’t find a deal they like during the offseason, he would instantly become the biggest fish at next fall’s trade deadline. Any team acquiring Crosby in-season would save millions of dollars of salary, making it easier to add the star pass rusher to their roster. They also wouldn’t need to give up any 2026 draft capital. It’s impossible to say who will be competing or what they’ll need in late-October, but if the Raiders do hold onto Crosby, they could launch another bidding war in the middle of next season.
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