Crosby flew to Baltimore expecting to close the deal. Ravens GM Eric DeCosta was 'gutted.' The Raiders say he is healthy. Two organizations, two reads of the same knee.
The Maxx Crosby trade to the Baltimore Ravens collapsed Thursday after Ravens team doctors discovered what the organization described as a degenerative knee condition during a pre-trade physical, ending a transaction that had been widely reported as imminent and triggering an immediate and consequential pivot by Baltimore's front office. Crosby, 28, had traveled from Las Vegas to Baltimore in anticipation of finalizing the deal. Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said publicly that the organization was "gutted" by the outcome. The Raiders, in their own statement, maintained that Crosby is healthy and productive — he recorded 10 sacks in 2025 while playing through a torn meniscus that required surgical repair in January — and that Baltimore backed out of a legitimate deal.
Four years, $168.8M — no drama, no holdout. The Maxx Crosby saga ends with a degenerative finding and a thirteen-hour pivot to Hendrickson. A.J. Brown, eight weeks to June 1.
I want to start this week with Seattle, because I think the conversation about what the Seahawks are building is not being had at the right scale. Four years, $168.8 million. $42.15 million per year. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is 24 years old and he is now the highest-paid wide receiver in the history of professional football. The extension surpasses Ja'Marr Chase's $40.25 million record by nearly two million dollars per year and was completed without a holdout, without a negotiating drama, without a single day of public posturing. Seattle looked at what they had, priced it honestly, and secured it.
Hendrickson is a speed-to-power converter with championship technique. The degenerative finding in Crosby's knee is not the same thing as the meniscus tear they repaired in January.
Trey Hendrickson signed with Baltimore on Friday afternoon, thirteen hours after the Maxx Crosby trade collapsed. The speed of that pivot deserves scrutiny, because it tells you something about how thoroughly Eric DeCosta had prepared for the possibility that the Crosby physical would come back with a problem. Let me tell you what Hendrickson actually does on a football field, because 17.5 sacks is a number and the technique is the thing.
Great organizations pay what their players are worth. Super Bowl MVPs go to the Chiefs. Second chances matter. Ten things I am watching this week.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba is 24 years old and he just became the highest-paid wide receiver in the history of professional football. Four years. $168.8 million. $42.15 million a year. The number surpasses Ja'Marr Chase's record by almost two million dollars per year. And Seattle made it happen without drama, without a holdout, without a single day of negotiating theater. They saw what they had. They paid for it. They moved on.
The best center in football. Three years, $81M. The Raiders are not waiting to protect their quarterback. Kubiak built this system once before. He knows what it needs.
The Las Vegas Raiders signed center Tyler Linderbaum to a three-year, $81 million contract on Friday — a record deal for the center position — in the most direct statement yet of how the organization intends to protect the quarterback it expects to select with the first overall pick in April's draft. Linderbaum, 25, spent his first four NFL seasons in Baltimore, where he was a Pro Bowl selection in each of the last two years and established himself as the best center in the league by multiple evaluation metrics. His release from Baltimore, where the Ravens faced cap constraints ahead of the Trey Hendrickson signing, created a rare opportunity to acquire a blue-chip interior lineman on the open market. Las Vegas moved quickly.
You want a winner. That is what Kubiak said. Nine days to the CFL Combine. Six days to Lane Kiffin's first LSU practice. Rodgers by end of month. Ten things.
Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy. He threw 41 touchdown passes and 6 interceptions. He led the Indiana Hoosiers to an undefeated regular season and a national championship. He is 22 years old and he has already done something that the state of Indiana will talk about for the rest of its life.
McCarthy's roster additions say everything about the offense he wants to run. The quarterback question is still open. And Indiana just signed a stadium bill that changed the conversation in Springfield.
Week two of free agency opened Monday without the quarterback question in Pittsburgh being answered, and I want to spend this morning talking about why that unanswered question is the most interesting story in the league right now. Here is what Pittsburgh has done in the first week and a half of the new league year: they traded for Michael Pittman Jr. from Indianapolis and signed him to a three-year, $59 million contract. They signed Rico Dowdle, who rushed for 1,076 yards in Carolina last season, as their primary back. They re-signed Cameron Heyward on a two-year extension. They brought in Jamel Dean from Tampa Bay for the secondary. Pittman, notably, played under Mike McCarthy in Dallas.
The kid from Jennings, Louisiana signed with New Orleans on Friday. Georgia opens spring practice tomorrow. Pittsburgh's quarterback question is coming. Ten things to watch this week.
Travis Etienne is home. I want to say that again, because I think some people read that transaction line on Friday afternoon and moved on to the next item. Travis Etienne — the kid from Jennings, Louisiana, who drove two hours to Baton Rouge to play college football, who became one of the best running backs in the country, who got drafted by Jacksonville and played five years in Florida — signed with the New Orleans Saints and is going home.
The Raiders did not sign a veteran starter in week one. Kubiak's public comments were not ambiguous. The first first-round quarterback pick by this organization since 2007 is coming in April.
The Las Vegas Raiders are not managing their quarterback situation. They are building toward a specific answer, and that answer is expected to arrive in the first round of the April 23 draft. Head coach Klint Kubiak has been explicit in his public comments about his interest in Fernando Mendoza, the prospect the Raiders are expected to select with what is projected to be a top-ten pick. Asked directly about Mendoza during the league's scouting combine last month, Kubiak offered a response that has since circulated widely in evaluation circles: you want a winner. The three-word assessment was notable less for its specificity than for what it revealed about the organization's direction — Kubiak was not hedging, was not managing expectations, was not leaving room for the conversation to be about someone other than the player he intends to select.
Brown stays in Philadelphia without resolution. Atlanta's 'compete' word keeps doing its work. Dallas gets specific about its window. And the teams left behind after seven days of free agency.
The first week of the new league year ends this Sunday without the story I most expected to have been resolved. A.J. Brown is still a Philadelphia Eagle.
Kansas City, the Jets, and Las Vegas figure to be the most active teams in week two. The draft on April 23 creates the practical end of the veteran market.
The first week of the NFL's new league year produced the major transactions most expected — quarterback acquisitions, premium receivers tagged or traded, defensive impact players changing addresses — and left a secondary wave of business for the next two to three weeks. Week two of free agency typically features more deliberate transactions: teams that missed week-one targets recalibrating, players whose contract asks were too high finding that the market has moved past them, and veterans released in cap-clearing moves finding landing spots.
Crosby reportedly failed his physical two months after meniscus surgery. Baltimore pivoted within hours and landed Hendrickson. The response was more professional than the drama looked.
The Baltimore Ravens and Las Vegas Raiders agreed to a blockbuster trade for pass rusher Maxx Crosby before the new league year opened — and then the Ravens walked away, a sequence that produced both the most dramatic story of the first day of free agency and one of its most consequential outcomes. The Raiders announced Tuesday evening that the "Baltimore Ravens have backed out of our trade agreement for Maxx Crosby." The Athletic's Dianna Russini reported that Crosby had failed his physical — he is approximately two months removed from a full meniscus repair — and the Ravens determined that the risk of completing a trade for a player at that stage of recovery was not compatible with the assets involved, which included multiple first-round picks.
Minnesota is not in a hurry. The teams that want Darnold are. The window closing tonight changes the leverage in ways that both sides understand.
The Sam Darnold trade situation has reached the phase where the closing of the negotiating window functions as a forcing mechanism. Teams that want Darnold have been operating under the assumption that the window's end creates clarity — either the trade gets done or it doesn't, and the organizations that lose the bidding have to pivot to whatever their alternative plan was. Minnesota's posture has been consistent: they are not selling under duress, the player is under contract, and they will receive full value for a quarterback who won an NFC Championship game before a January injury. That posture is correct given their leverage. What changes tonight is that the teams pursuing Darnold shift from window-period conversations — which can happen freely — to the more formal and observable structure of trade negotiations in the open market.
The first twenty-four hours of the negotiating window tell you which front offices did the work and which ones are making calls they should have made three weeks ago.
The negotiating window opened yesterday, and I've been in this business long enough to know that the first twenty-four hours tell you almost nothing and everything at the same time. What they tell you is which organizations were genuinely prepared. The teams that had already done their due diligence — the medicals, the film, the compensation structure — moved quickly. The teams that hadn't moved slowly, or not at all, or made calls they should have made three weeks ago. By now, every general manager in the league has a reasonably clear picture of what the first wave looks like. Some of them are happy with what they see. Most are not.
The first wave is always the most volatile. What the early movement tells us about which teams were prepared and which are still catching up.
The NFL's free-agent negotiating window opened Monday evening, and the first twenty-four hours produced the volume of activity that the league's calendar always generates in this window — which is to say, a great deal of reported movement and a great deal of caution about treating any of it as settled. The window allows teams to negotiate with players whose contracts have expired but prohibits official signings until 4 PM ET Wednesday, when the new league year begins. The gap between agreement and announcement is what makes this forty-eight-hour period simultaneously the most active and least verifiable in the offseason calendar.
Sam Darnold's situation in Minnesota is the most consequential unresolved question in the league. New England is watching. Carolina is building around someone it hasn't named.
The quarterback market entered the negotiating window without the clarity that teams with genuine needs had hoped for, and the first twenty-four hours have confirmed what league sources were privately describing for weeks: the path to a starter in this cycle runs through the trade market, not free agency. The available quarterbacks in traditional free agency — players whose contracts expired — are, with limited exceptions, backups and developmental players. That market will serve teams looking for depth behind established starters. It will not serve Carolina, Las Vegas, Tennessee, or New England, all of which need something more than depth.
The trade market is where real movement will happen. Darnold is the name being discussed. Carolina, Las Vegas, New England, and Tennessee are the teams most visibly in need.
The quarterback market this offseason involves fewer proven starters in play than expected six months ago, and the gap between what teams want and what's available is creating some creative thinking about how to acquire a functional starter without giving up first-round capital. The trade market is where most of the real movement will happen. Sam Darnold, who led Minnesota to the NFC Championship game before a January shoulder injury, is the name most frequently mentioned in league circles as a player whose current team might be willing to move. Darnold's injury recovery timeline, combined with Minnesota's rebuilt organizational structure, creates the conditions for a conversation that neither side has publicly acknowledged having.