Just about everyone has weighed in on the botched Maxx Crosby trade in the last two weeks, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that the Baltimore Ravens weren’t truthful about why they backed out of the deal.
On Tuesday, Crosby talked about this visit to Baltimore and said he didn’t meet with the Ravens’ GM at any point in his five-hour visit. ESPN’s Pat McAfee reacted to Crosby’s comments on Wednesday and said it’s unusual that a team would trade two first-round picks for a player and the GM not even introduce himself.
“That is an interesting dynamic that is going on over there in Baltimore,” McAfee said on Wednesday. “It doesn’t make Baltimore look good at all, but I guess they don’t care.”
“As soon as he got in that building, he felt weird, he said. He didn’t see the GM for five hours. You just traded two [first-round picks] for this guy. He’s Maxx Crosby. That’s just very weird. Our sources have told us that Trey [Hendrickson] was being told that… Maxx was going to be on the team.”
“It’s like ‘Why isn’t the GM, the guy who just traded two [first-round picks]. why aren’t you meeting him there?’”
The Ravens have put out the message that their plan was to trade for Crosby and still sign Hendrickson, but that scenario never seemed realistic.
As was mentioned this week, it would be interesting to know if the “Crosby and Hendrickson” plan was ever communicated to Crosby.
If it wasn’t communicated to Crosby, it’s hard to imagine the Ravens have been telling the truth about adding both players.
For what it’s worth, ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio brought up another theory on his podcast this week.
Florio said that if Raiders were never really interested in trading Crosby, the Ravens might have been the perfect trade partner to orchestrate a failed deal.
“There are some people who think that maybe the Raiders engineered this and maybe the Raiders knew this was going to happen and maybe the Raiders knew this is the only way to get Maxx Crosby to want to be part of the team,” Florio said on PFT Live this week.
“If so, well done, Tom Brady. Well done. It wasn’t my idea. Somebody mentioned it and I started thinking about it.”
Considering the statement the Raiders released after the deal fell through with Baltimore, it’s hard to imagine the Raiders were actually excited… but it’s a talking point that’s out there either way.
x: @raidersbeat
