The Baltimore Ravens shotgun blasted the NFL offseason doors off, trading two first-round draft picks for Raiders star pass rusher Maxx Crosby.
Baltimore only recorded 30 sacks last year—one of the worst teams in the NFL—and lacked a game-wrecking star. Maxx Crosby fixed both leaks.
4 days later, the Ravens snuck into the Raiders team facility, took their first round picks back, crept out through a cracked window, called Trey Hendrickson’s agent and signed the Cincinnati Bengals All-Pro pass rusher to a 4-year, $112 million deal.
What went wrong with the Maxx Crosby deal?
Baltimore claims Crosby’s physical earned pause.
Maxx tore his ACL early in the season, played through it anyway, until Las Vegas finally shut him down in the final two weeks—to Crosby’s frustration.
But having only gone under the knife in January, with only god aware of how much damage accumulated by playing through the initial diagnoses—I understand the Ravens wanting their money back. Always save your receipts.
Skepticism is fair. The Ravens have never traded a first-round pick in their franchise history.
Kindaaaaaa looks like a team that realized they could sign Trey Hendrickson, a better pass rusher, and still keep their first round picks and just took the trade back moments before the NFL trade window opened.
Rat shit.
But it’s the Ravens job to make the Ravens better, not the Raiders.
What does Trey Hendrickson bring to the Ravens?
We’re not too far removed from the best season of Trey Hendrickson’s career. All-Pro selection in 2024, led the NFL with 17.5 sacks—a one-man army on a Bengals defense that couldn’t stop, drop and roll.
He ended the 2025 season on injured reserve following a procedure to repair a core muscle injury, finishing with four sacks in seven games.
Unlike Crosby, however, Trey Hendrickson is almost exclusively a pass rusher, whereas Maxx helps stop the run too.
But he’s cheaper than Crosby and didn’t just crawl off a surgery table a few weeks ago.
What’s next for the Raiders?
The Raiders have to trade Maxx Crosby. Whatever money trading Maxx to Baltimore freed up in Vegas’s books are spent. New center, Tyler Linderbaum, new linebackers Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker, shit, they even signed a kicker, Gay.
2 first-round picks are off the table.
All leverage lost.
The Ravens tanked his value.
A very public breakup, a bum knee and pending free agent deals, Las Vegas approaches a fork: either trade Crosby for pennies on the dollar or beg him to return after ending his season early for him and literally trading him away, like, the other day.
If any team with a couple extra 7th-round picks lying around is reading this, I think you can’t get Maxx Crosby hitting a weed vape in your locker room by the end of the week.
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