Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Andrew Brandt talks saga of Ravens' nixed trade for Maxx Crosby

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote were joined by former NFL executive Andrew Brandt to discuss the Ravens backing out of their trade agreement to acquire Raiders star defensive end Maxx Crosby after he failed a physical with Baltimore.

This hour is brought to you by Joel Osco. I've got a responsibility to the Ravens, to this community, to our fans, and to Steve Bishotti, to do what we think is best for the club. And that's what we always try to do. Every decision we make is based on this idea. Is this the best thing for the Ravens? Very, very challenging. Again, I understand how people might, maybe from afar would feel that way. Nobody's more upset about this than me.

That is Eric DeCocke. Costa from his press conference yesterday. He is the GM for the Baltimore Ravens. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotty on 104-3 The Score. We broadcast live through the scores, Hyundai Studios, brought to you by your local Hyundai dealers, and we go to our hotline. That is where we find a guy who I think can help us out with a lot of these questions when it comes to Max Crosby and what happened in Baltimore, what the process is with the salary cap for a lot of teams right now, how guys are creating space. Andrew Brandt, he is the executive direct. of sports law at Villanova.

He's an NIL consultant, the author of the Sunday 7 newsletter, host of the Business of Sports Podcast, and the former Packers Executive and Player Agent. Thank you so much for joining us, Andrew. Yeah, happy to be with you. It's always a busy time, this time of year. You know, for people in the business of sports, whether it's agents, whether it's team executives, now on the college side, which I'm doing, sort of negotiating player contracts, The busy time of years when there are no games.

So it's counterintuitive to coaches and players, but this is where it all happens, where front offices in the NFL massage architect mold their teams for 26, and it's the busiest week of the year for them. Well, Andrew, the reason I also thought about asking to have you on, and we thank you again for joining us, was sometimes we just need the nuts and the bolts and the process of how something like this would happen, say, with Max Crosby, where we know he had a menisical repair injury that he tended to. We know that there was a surgery. We know that he wanted out. We know that there was a process as to whether or not he was worth two first round picks in a player and then

obviously the physical. So from an executive standpoint, how does this process go where it gets to the point where it does where Baltimore decides to pick a different lane? Well, there's agreed upon trade parameters. They go through it. I mean, I'm sure the Raiders were talking to a bunch of different teams and they got the best offer from the Ravens. But any trade, and

this is something that so many people don't truly understand, any trade is contingent on a physical and every physical is subjective. There's no standard NFL physical. There's no physical that say the Raiders do and everybody has to abide by it. So every

team does its own physical. And this is happened many times. Maybe not so much a trade of this magnitude, but players are signed. They think in free agency, go take a physical and it's not a pass. We saw this in the NBA last year when the Hornets traded Mark Williams to the Lakers. Lakers sent them back. So it happens. So the Baltimore physical was a fail. And that's kind of the end of story. And then all the, you know, all the media attention on what really happened or they get cold feet or, you know, I just think in these situations you have to take people for their word, which is we're giving up to first round picks, it's going to be a very intense and comprehensive physical, and the report back to the GM

was it's a fail. And obviously it gets a lot of attention, but these kind of things happen all the time in sports. Well, Andrew, I think you're saying then what I have been thinking, And I do like Eric DeCost. I think he's been a good GM with what you said. The physicals are subjective. Trades are always contingent upon a physical. Even though Baltimore is getting hammered for this, and there are conspiracy theories out there, did Baltimore do anything wrong?

I mean, we don't know all the details, and we don't know the, you know, some of these things are not black and white. There could be some gray there. and maybe if this was a trade for a six-round pick, you pass them. You know, it's all related. Like the magnitude of the trade is related to the importance of the physical. And maybe if it's a fifth-round pick, you're like, okay, we know he's not ready until July or whatever it's going to be. Yeah, for that risk, we'll do it. But it's all related.

you know so would eric de cost to be doing this if it was a low-level player for a future seventh-round pick probably not but i don't think they're sitting there saying jesus you know two first-round picks we really want to get rid of those even if the players is healthy no i don't think that so they're getting some slam out there but i think if i'm in the raven's front office I'm saying, okay, we can go through with this and keep our reputation clean out there, but maybe have thrown away two first round pick for damaged goods. Or we can take whatever PR hit it's going to be and feel good about failing the physical on them. Well, Andrew, I think that's part of it too, is Mark and I were just talking about how we were trying to quantify the Bears playmakers who left the building, for example,

with the one score wins that they had, how many interceptions that just left the team? How does that translate into wins and losses, right? Which I feel like is a massive part of your job as a former executive. And if you're on the agency side, you're trying to sell wins and losses, points on the scoreboard. When it comes to quantifying this, for example, I think any insight you can give us on the concept of how much does a failed physical cost you in a two first round price? How much does that physical matter? Any sort of exchange there or mental process that you can enlighten us with really helps us understand how this would go.

Well, it's a massive investment. And we've seen two this year already, Michael Parsons and Soss Gardner. Unfortunately, both got hurt. Micah got hurt late in the year when he was on the way to being the defensive player of the year. I think that's still looking like a win for the Packers. Soss Gardner got hurt right away. We don't know. I said at the time, that looks like a real win for the Jets.

I don't think you trade two ones for a cornerback. unless he's a certain Hall of Famer. For a pass rusher, you know, it's probably more of a sell. You can trade two number ones, but it's a massive investment. And as we've been saying, it's all part of the investment. You're not going to do anything that you're entirely sure. And this is not even a rookie player where you're going to be limit on the financial side because of the rookie pool.

This is a player making top-end money in addition to the two number ones. So I think that all goes into it. And the reports I saw were not only the Ravens medical staff, but they brought in some other medical staff. So obviously there was concern, and they bring in an outside doctor to basically, I would think say to them, like, are we seeing this the right way? And it's all these terms that you and I don't know about conjural defects

or whatever is going to be inside that knee. this is some heavy medical talk. You know, the one thing at the Packers, I told our coaches, we've got to empower our medical staff. Like, if our medical staff says he's out, Sunday, he's out. Like, we're not living in these days in the 1960s anymore, or 70s or 80s,

where the coach overrules the doctor. Like, so, you know, medical is something people don't know about running a team in any sort. sport is how much time is devoted to medical. Yeah, sorry, Andrew. Yeah, just too much money involved, right? Yeah, and I think that the one thing I always say, in sports, especially football, hey, listen, I'm old.

I've been a triathletal. I've been a lot of years, and I'm a little bit beat up. So if you're injured, you're going to be more injured later. If you're injured and you're earlier in your career, you're going to be more injured later. It's just a fact. And I don't know age and I don't think Max Crosby's aging, but this is a long-term play. You're not giving up two number ones for like two years of play. You're giving up two number ones for a long term.

And I think that went into it. It's not about now. He's probably going to be a good player in 26. But this is about the future. If I may read one of your tweets back to you, Ann. Drew, that's what I think I'm going to do right now. Raiders, you write, colon, quote, we're now not trading Crosby, close quote.

And your translation, this is for Andrew Brandt, offers have dried up. Is that what you think is going on, obviously, because everybody trusts the Baltimore doctors? Well, I do think it's interesting that, you know, these sources are kind of slamming the Ravens, but no one steps enough to get Max Crosby. Yeah.

So whatever the Ravens came up with, people are like, you know, if the reports were true that the Ravens outbid all these teams, you know, you hear about the Cowboys, you hear about the Packers, you hear about Eagles, like they don't seem to be wanting to get Max Crosby now. So maybe later, I mean, I'm looking at, I didn't even know about this, guys. I didn't know he had a surgery in January. So to me, this is a trade that's made after a couple more months of rehab. Well, and that's a good point that you make too, Andrew.

And when we're talking to Andrew Brandt about this, if you guys are just joining us, Andrew Brandt, NFL executive, NIL guy for Villanova, executive director of sports law there as well. I think that's the part that makes this hard is, number one, there's a couple things in play here. Trey Hendrickson was available at a free agency price, so you don't have to pay any first rounders for him or any draft pick. Number two, Max Crosby set the market. It seems like nothing really moved after that. But then when it did, everybody moved so quickly. I wonder if there are some teams who, had they known, Crosby might have been available for a cheaper price, like you mentioned, based on the physical.

If they would have still gone in the direction they did. Yeah, you never know. I mean, I think there's also a lot of questions I get all the past couple days about are the Raiders now taking on this $30 million that they have back and get out of any of these deals they've signed. no I mean listen people figure out a way around the cap it it happens so I think people get too caught up in like oh my god what are we going to do no they understand it if you make a trade in the NFL it's subject to physical if you're trading a guy who had surgery a month ago it's got to be something the Raiders thought was a risk you know how do you and I'm sure in the conversations between De Costa and the Raiders like tell me about the the knee. Yeah. And there's a reason he flew out to Baltimore, you know, other than to celebrate. This was something that had to be looked at.

Yeah, and he, and this is part of why he's great, but he plays with a ferocious motor, too, then that has to be taken into account all the snaps that he's taken as well. I love what you're saying about the cap and anything can essentially be manipulated. and the bears have been in this situation that their cap number grew in the offseason. They were able to, you know, by waving players, trading players, things like that. My specific question is about restructuring contracts. What's the percentage of players, Andrew, that when they are approached for restructure, just flat out say, no thank you?

Well, very few, but, you know, it depends what restructure means. the pure cap restructure is a paper transaction. If a restructure includes a pay cut, then you're having a different discussion. And I've done a lot of both. When you're going to a player for a restructure that has no cash impact, and this is what people don't understand, cash and cap, they're very different things. If the cash is the same, you're just trying to move around cap,

players will usually do that. Sometimes they may hold you up for, hey, if I'm going to do this for you, kind of get better payment terms. So if you're converting a salary of $10 million to bonus, so you can prorate it out, a player agent may say, hey, instead of paying that through the season, can we get some of that now in March? So cash flow usually can be an issue.

But I've never had, you know, I never think a player would say I'm not going to do a paper transaction. But if you're talking about a pay cut, that's a deeper discussion. we're talking to Andrew Brandt. He is our, he's, I feel like you're our cap guy. You know more about it than we do, that's for sure. And when I thought about what you said on a previous interview with us,

you said when you were at Green Bay, your cap was your budget. Like the end. That was it. And it really made me think because you've talked to us about teams who can do the whole kick the can down the road thing. But it's my understanding, and you know this better than we do, that there are some teams where they're more fluid to be able to do that, like I think of the Eagles, for example, who come to mind, and maybe there are teams like the Bears who don't want to get in that position.

What dictates whether or not a team does that and gets into these long restructures? You know, the New Orleans and Drew Brees, for example, as opposed to other teams who don't? Yeah, I mean, each organization has to decide it, and sometimes they talk about windows and, you know, eagles in a window of a dominant team. and pushing out with all these voids. And voids are just like creating these dummy years at the end of the contracts.

You can per rate further out. In other words, you can load more cash now and push out cap. It always comes back to bite you. You know, the feeling is the cap's going to be going up so you can take pushouts now. I just looked at it on a cash perspective. I was with a team without an owner. We had to set how we're going to spend.

And I just looked at the cap. this year's cap's $300 million, and I wanted to be true to our fans in Packer Nation, like, yeah, we're going to spend the cap. And the cap is accounting. So I think for fans, what you want to know is your team spending the cap. As to what they do on the accounting side, that's really up to them. I always told agents, you know, agents will always tell you, hey, I can make it cap-friendly for you. And I'm like, I don't need your help.

It's my job. Like, you worry about your player. I'll worry about our cap. The issue is what's the cold, hard money going out in a contract. Cap is just for teams to figure out on their own. I get a little, I smile sometimes when people are all crazy about teams' cap or not. They'll figure it out. Okay, that's good to know.

Andrew, there's some. They may figure it out by barring from the future, but that's okay. I mean, this is what team have three, four people in their offices doing all day. So it's just accounting. It's not the key is what are they spending? Well, and it's funny because we have, we even have, and I'm sure you've probably seen it too. The discussion among NFL fans, some say, well, the cap isn't real, or you can always restructure under the cap, or they have a more fluid concept of what the cap is. But I think in practice, we haven't always seen that out of team.

So that's why I ask the question, because I feel like for some, yeah, that's probably the case. But to apply that theory to every NFL team, I don't think is the truth. Well, I get the question all the time is the cap real. And I think the answer is this. If the world's going to end in a couple years, well, the cap's not real. So it's kind of like individual debt is basically what you're saying. Yeah. You can't just hit file delete.

three years. So, you know, you've got a heart, you've got Tua Taga Lavova, however he says his last name. Taga Vila. It's going to count 99 million on the, 99 million on the cap. Like that's a third of the cap. And he's not, he's going to be playing in Atlanta. So that's real. I mean, if people don't think the cap's real, the Miami Dolphins are playing with two-thirds of a deck this year because of that one contract. Now you add on Tyree Kill, you add on Bradley Chubb. You know, the dolphins may have playing with half a deck this year. Half a deck. So that's real. So you're saying I have to pay my credit card bill? Unless you die. Eventually. Fair enough. Unless the world ends.

I tend to, I, I'm kind of like you. I tend to believe, you know, the cap is the number. But when you've got cap guys like this, I think it is a fair question. ask. Yeah. Andrew, this is always informative. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you want more of Andrew's work, you can check out the Business of Sports Podcast

and the Sunday 7 newsletter. And what's the latest at Villanova? What are you guys working on for this semester? Well, I do my teaching, but I'm now obviously doing all the NIL deals. So the transfer portal would be hot and heavy in a couple weeks. And you think that NFL players

have it good. These college players, oh my God, they're free agents every year, unlike NFL and NBA players that have contracts because we have an unregulated transfer portal. The college situation has some tough negotiations compared to the pros, even. Well, hopefully at least somebody's making some money out of the thing. And we also hope that you have a somewhat peaceful offseason ahead. Thank you so much. And I'm doing all those things, the newsletter for people who are tweeting at me, it's at MySunday7.com, and then I do these reels on Instagram at Andrew Brandt, too, if you want to check them out. Nice.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming on with us, Andrew. We appreciate it. Love a good reel. Thank you so much. Andrew Brandt, too, on Instagram, Sunday 7 is the newsletter. So that is Andrew Brandt. I feel like he's our cap guy.

Can we call him that? Oh, absolutely. I'm certainly not the cap guy. He's a Packer's exec, though. Yeah, I was almost going to say to him, as we were talking about Villanova, the farther you get away from Packersness, the better. So stay where you are. Don't worry about Green Bay. I understand that it's at your base of knowledge and you need to allude to it.

I almost also asked him what his greatest cap manipulation was when he was with the Green Bay Packers. But there's just not enough time to ask all the questions. That would have been an excellent question. Yeah, they're just the time they're telling us to stop asking questions. So I stopped asking questions. And the other thing, too, is that a lot of this really is tell us how this works. And it's like every time I think I have a hold on it and understand it, part of me, like I take two steps forward, one step back when it comes to understanding all of the intricacies of the cap and what it means and what it doesn't mean. But he always helps.

I know more. I just took two steps forward. For the record, I like paying my credit card off every month. Oh, I enjoy doing that too. I don't like having extra stress in my life. I, as soon as, like for instance, my parking that I pay for in the city of Chicago goes, right on the card. As soon as I see that, I'm paying it off right away. Gotcha, credit card. You're not going to get me. Not anymore. You used to get me. You did. Not anymore.

Now, is that always possible? No. No, it's not. But that is where I stand with it. I'm with you. Lales. But it sounds like according to the Eagles, the cap in sometime in 1998. So we've got that going for us. That's good. Coming up next year on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, something completely different. Number one, as much as I didn't enjoy cheering for Bryce Terang. I kind of enjoyed cheering for Vinnie Pasquintino. Even though he's a socks killer, even though Team Italy comes through for Team USA at the World Baseball Classic, we will listen to an interview that I want to play specifically because I think it will entertain Mark.

So we'll do that next.