Nearly a month since the Ravens first agreed to a blockbuster trade for Maxx Crosby, NFL executives still don’t buy Baltimore’s story. According to Mike Sando of The Athletic, despite their protestations over a physical, the situation still doesn’t add up. While the Ravens continue to insist balking on the trade won’t hurt their ability to do business, they’ve clearly raised suspicions.
“Three weeks after the Ravens cited medical concerns for backing out of the Crosby agreement, league insiders suspect Baltimore acted in bad faith”, Sando wrote. He quoted one executive from another team as saying, “I would not put it past them to agree to this trade and then slow-play the physical”. Like Crosby himself, he doesn’t think we’ll ever know the full truth.
The Ravens agreed to trade for Maxx Crosby on March 6 with the Raiders, sending back two first-round picks. Four days later on March 10, the Raiders themselves revealed the Ravens were pulling out of the deal. Citing a failed physical, they claimed not to feel comfortable with the long-term prognosis of his knee. Crosby continues to recover from an injury that ended his season last year and required surgery.
“If you really wanted the guy, you would get him in there for his physical as soon as possible”, Sando quoted a different executive as saying regarding the Ravens’ explanation for backing out of the Maxx Crosby trade. All deals in the NFL are pending a physical and are not complete until a team passes a player. But it was understood going in, given his surgery, that he would not “pass” one.
“You would pull your doctors off whatever they were doing. That’s easy. It was advantageous for the Ravens to slow-play the physical and keep open their options”, the same executive said about the Crosby trade. “That is why I believe the narrative”.
A third executive said the Ravens didn’t just get cold feet when they backed out of the Crosby trade. He believes they were prepared to trade for Crosby, “presuming they could not get [Trey] Hendrickson”. But it later became apparent that they could. And then shortly after reversing course on the trade, they signed Hendrickson.
Technically speaking, the Ravens would have been entirely within their rights to simply change their mind and not trade for Maxx Crosby. Not contract nor trade is official until it’s official, and this was far from official. You don’t have to have a good reason to decide not to do something you said you would.
Given the very obvious nature of Crosby’s injury, however, the Ravens’ pointing their finger at a failed physical for putting the kibosh on the trade is still, evidently, not sitting well with front offices around the league. That’s at least three executives from other teams expressing these views. And we already knew they felt this way, but this is a few weeks later, and that sentiment persists. The Ravens can deny this is bad for business all they want, and perhaps they’re right. Ultimately, business is business. But it could affect things, and it certainly doesn’t look good if teams are still talking about it.
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