Amidst a flurry of roster moves on Wednesday, the Las Vegas Raider gave a definitive answer to one of their most significant offseason decisions.
Superstar defensive end Maxx Crosby, whose contract situation was the subject of trade rumors dating back to this past season, will remain a Raider for the foreseeable future. He agreed to terms with the team to a three-year, $106.5 million contract with $91.5 million guaranteed. The deal makes Crosby the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL.
“Today’s a special day,” Crosby said at his press conference on Wednesday. “Being a part of Raider Nation, being here almost seven years now, it’s been an absolute blessing in so many ways. My family, obviously my wife and my daughter here today, the sacrifice, the ups and downs, the 5 a.m.’s, the non-stop commitment to excellence on a daily basis is what this is all about. … Now I’m just focused on being the best version of myself every single day and giving them everything I got.”
With this bit of business now settled, here are three significant developments the Crosby deal indicates:
Crosby is sold on the Raiders’ vision
Despite getting everything he wanted out of the deal, Crosby does not sign on the dotted line without belief in what the Raiders are doing.
Crosby was at Intermountain Health Performance Center when Pete Carroll and John Spytek were introduced in a press conference in January, and the two flanked their star pass rusher during the conference on Wednesday. The new head coach and general manager built the framework on how to approach the offseason in order to properly implement their vision of what they want the Raiders to become. Clearly, Crosby liked what he heard at the negotiation table, and he has every intention of seeing Carroll and Spytek’s vision through.
“After the coaching change after the season there was a little bit of mystery, but once Coach [Pete] Carroll got the job, we met for the first time before he got hired, and we’re already breaking balls going back and forth, and we have that relationship that we’re building every day, but it’s all about competition,” Crosby said. “And I feel like certain people are meant to be in your life for a reason. We’re building our relationship just like all of us up here, but we all have the same goal and that’s to win, and that’s what I’m all about.”
Resetting the edge market
While the Raiders celebrated getting Crosby under contract, other teams across the league winced when they saw the price tag.
For teams facing similar decisions on their top pass rushers, they now know the contract details their players will bring to the negotiation table. If the Cleveland Browns want to keep Myles Garrett, for instance, they now have a baseline on what it will take for him to stay. Staying in Ohio, the Cincinnati Bengals will have to do the same with Trey Hendrickson, and the retirement of Sam Hubbard means they have no leverage in negotiations.
However, no team is going to feel the pain more than the Dallas Cowboys, who face a pending decision on Micah Parsons. The team has recently relented on handing out major deals in order to keep star players, signing wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback Dak Prescott before last season and already locking down defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa before free agency kicks off next week. With Crosby being the latest domino to fall, the Cowboys now know the financial threshold they will invariably have to cross to keep their elite pass rusher long-term.
The Raiders got ahead while they still could, and Crosby’s reign as the highest-paid non-quarterback is destined to be a short one.
This regime is different
Above all else, Carroll and Spytek showed in a single move their commitment to excellence through competition.
Previous Raiders regimes would have waited until a more critical juncture to get this move out of the way, if not panic and pull the ripcord on Crosby at the first sign of trouble. However, Carroll and Spytek saw Crosby as the exact archetype of player they coveted, moving quickly to get a deal done. Keeping Crosby shows that the values he represents on the field such as leadership and work ethic are traits Carroll and Spytek highly value in players.
“And when people like Maxx [Crosby], I mean, it’s no secret, it hasn’t been sunshine and roses around here forever, but when he makes a commitment to the Raiders like this and he stands for everything Coach and I and this new staff and everybody talks about, he signs up for it,” Spytek said on Wednesday. “I think that that speaks volumes and I hope it’s noticed in our locker room. I hope it’s noticed around the league. And our expectation is we want people to want to be here. We want people, once they get here, to want to stay here. And so, to us, it just made a lot of sense to get it done now.”
FANS REACT: Raider Nation overjoyed with Maxx Crosby staying
