Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Mike Florio: It makes sense for Bears to 'monitor' Maxx Crosby situation

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris were joined by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk to discuss the Ravens backing out of a trade agreement to acquire star defensive end Maxx Crosby from the Raiders after Crosby failed their physical. How many teams are interested in Crosby now?

Ladies and gentlemen, joining us now is a man who's got a massive brain. Mike Florio. He used to be a lawyer, then he decided to take his talents to the internet. NBC Sports. I'm sorry, I'm late. I was talking to Robert Kraft. That is at the time for an airing of grievances. Pro football talk.

I got a lot of problems with you, people. No, you're going to hear about it. On Chicago Sports Radio, 1043, the score. I want to keep talking Legos. Well, it turns out that there's a lot of problems. with a lot of people right now, and we know just the guy to talk about it. Mike Florio, he is the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. He joins us every week at this time, Wednesday's at 11.

Today is no different. He is at Pro Football Talk on Twitter, and he is on Twitch. Twitch.tv slash The Score Chicago. Mike, thanks for joining us on this wildly busy day. Yeah, you know, free agency was actually kind of boring at first. know that there are transactions that Bears fans are interested in, but there really wasn't a whole lot of sizzle when the biggest quarterback on the market is a guy with six career starts, and the most discussed and highest paid relative to the market signing as a center.

We needed a little B-12 shot, and we got one last night, and it continues today. Mike, what's your reaction to this and your understanding of when people talk about a failed physical, it seems to be very vague and very much at the behest of whoever or whichever organization is doing the evaluating here. And that is a reality for every trade that happens, every signing that happens. I remember a few years ago, Jimmy Garoppolo signed with the Raiders and the reporters were in the press room waiting for the press conference and it was delayed. And they basically said, Allah, the Wizard of Oz, go home and come back tomorrow because they found something in the physical that required. the deal to be reworked. So none of these deals that have been negotiated since noon, Eastern, 11th Central on Monday are done until they're done and they can't be done until the teams

get a chance to look at the guys. These deals are done sight unseen for the most part. You've got to bring the guy in and make sure that everything's fine. For trades, it's the same thing. Before the Ravens we're going to commit a couple of first round picks and presumably adjust Max Crosby's contract because his average of 35.5 million per year was well below the going rate at the high end of the market of 46.5 million for Michael Parsons. You want to make sure that you're comfortable. And, you know, in hindsight, now we raised the flag that, hey, hey, none of these deals are done until they're done. Both teams have to communicate the terms independently and identically to the league office. Anyone can back out for any reason and it violates no rules.

I wish I had been more clear on the reality that you've got a guy who just had a guy, a meniscus repair in January. So you're not assessing whether or not he can pass a physical and play today. You're making a projection that he's going to be able to pass and play later. So it's a big gray area. And for the Ravens who had never before traded a first round pick for a player in franchise history, they got to be damn sure that they're making the right move here and it's not going to blow up in their faces. And Adam Schaeffer reported last night, this wasn't just one doctor going rogue or getting a wink and a nod from somebody in the front office who had cold feet about this transaction. They consulted with multiple doctors and they decided

they weren't comfortable moving forward. Mike, that's it. I feel like there's been a general understanding of where Max Crosby was going to be physically at this point in time, but that the price of the two first round picks was the real concern for multiple NFL teams. We've seen multiple reports. I believe it was an issue of perhaps they just didn't feel like that first round pick asking price made sense anymore for them to the tune of two of them. Yeah, you're taking on a significant risk that you're not going to get a return on your investment of two first round picks and, and it never got to this point, but I believe his contract would have been renegotiated on the way through the door because the Ravens were inheriting four years at a total average payout of

29 million. Why wouldn't you expect something more that puts you better in line with the market, especially if the Ravens think enough of you to give up two first-round picks? And that's always, you know, it's a sliding scale, the components of a trade. What do we have to give up to get the guy? What do we have to pay to make him happy? We saw what the Packers gave up for Michael Parsons and made him the guy who's at the top of the market. So you just better be sure that you're comfortable with the medical side of it. And the problem is this. The Raiders dropped this bomb on Twitter last night saying the Ravens backed out of the agreement. We'll have no further comment at this time.

It creates the impression the Ravens did something dirty, that they did something they shouldn't have done. And the Ravens have been silent about it. I think from a PR standpoint, the Ravens would be wise to find a way to get their story out there directly, not by leaking anything to reporters, but issue a statement. that, hey, this deal wasn't done. None of these deals are done until the physical is passed, and we decided not to pass. You know, what they could have done, they could have waited until the deal was official today pending a physical, and all of this could have happened tomorrow. That would have been an even bigger mess, but that's the thing we've seen from time to time. We've seen trades fall

apart after the deal's done, after it's announced pending a physical, and the physical isn't passed. This isn't the first time that's happened. It's just the most dramatic and jarring way, that it's unfolded. Mike Florio joining us here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie as he does each time this week. He's the creator and editor-in-chief of pro football talk. And Mike, maybe I am a conspiracy theorist. But it's hard for me to believe that this would have gone down in the manner that it did if Trey Hendrickson wasn't out here, still dangling, no one meeting his price.

The price kind of lowers for what people think he's going to get on the open market. And in less than 12 hours, they go from backing out of this deal to signing Trey Henderson. Does that make me a conspiracy theorist? Because I don't think that the Ravens do this unless they have the backup. Because I see the dearth of available edge rushers after free agency, the frenzy was over. You know, the phrase conspiracy theory is a lot more or a lot less fun than it used to be. Now you don't want to be labeled a conspiracy theorist. There was a time where it was kind of cool.

But consider the way this all played out. And at a minimum, the Ravens got lucky because Trey Hendrickson, if his demands weren't unrealistic, and he came into this process wanting a lot more than the market was going to bear. There was a report from Jonathan Jones of CBS yesterday that there was a $10 million gap between what Hendrickson wanted and what teams were offering. It reminded me of one of my good friend's father's favorite sayings, if I could buy you for what you're worth and sell you for what you think you're worth, I'd be very rich.

And if Hendrickson had just been more reasonable, he'd been gone on Monday. But because he was being stubborn, he was there, and the Ravens could swoop in and get him for $28 million a year, a million per year less than what Crosby was going to cost them without a renegotiation of the contract. Crosby was going to be 29 and two first-round picks. They get Hendrickson for 28,

and no picks of any kind to be surrendered to the Cincinnati Bengals. Mike, how many teams do you think are left now interested in Max Crosby still in the NFL? Well, I think plenty of teams are interested if they can pounce on this, this weakness that the Raiders may now be dealing with because they've gone out and blown their budget on a bunch of free agents. And reportedly, they're going to honor the agreements. It'll be interesting to see if one or more of those guys fail their physicals on the way through the door. But the Raiders could, if they want to, they could call up the age of retirement. Lindenbaum and say, you know, we made this offer under the notion that Max Crosby's $30 million salary for this year was going to be off the books. Now that it's back, we've got to reconfigure

and we're sorry, but we can't proceed with this deal. The Raiders have every right to do that. So they're going to proceed, but they do have a problem now. And even though they can automatically restructure Max Crosby's contract and reduce the cap number for this year, it's still $30 million in cash. And these teams all set a budget for each year of the cash they're willing to devote to free agency, and to the rest of the roster. So, you know, they got to go back to Mark Davis and say, hey, you know, that budget that we came up with, we need to add 30 million back into it now if they have to keep him. And right now, all indications are, and who knows what to believe, because it could be posturing,

the Raiders are content to keep him. Crosby is content to stay. and he may have had like an epiphany. Hey, I want out, I want out, I want out. He goes through this experience in Baltimore. And now he comes back. It's like, you know what, I'll just stay here. And I'm happy with all these guys we've signed.

Maybe we're going to be competitive now. So he may truly be interested in staying. But this is all part of the pushback to get the next team, if there is one, to be more reasonable in what they think they can get him for. And I look at it this way. We talked earlier today on PFT Live about whether or not a trade could still happen. I think it can happen, but maybe it's going to happen once he's able to pass a physical. Maybe it's going to happen later in the year, maybe even after the draft.

Maybe they still get two first round picks, but it's 27 and 28, not 26 and 27, after the dust settles on a lot of things, and after the doctors of whichever team may be interested in Max Crosby can get a look at not where he is and might be, but where he actually is after months of rehabbing this menace. niscus repair on his knee, which is usually a three-month injury. Mike, these are excellent points to bring it up. And it makes me so curious because I feel like now is the window if you're willing to take the risk where you're going to get the low deal, the low value of getting him in your building.

And if he builds it back up and he's back to playing, isn't that going to be back to two first rounders? Well, I think it would be. But here's the other reality, too. And this is why it's in Max Crosby's interest to take a step back and continue to rehab and get himself healthy because if part of this transaction is about getting Max Crosby a raise, the team's going to be reluctant to do that too. So let's wait and thread all the needles at the same time. Trade and contract. You want to get that new deal done as you go through the door.

Once the trade is over, so if he would be traded right now and the team would say, well, we'll take a look at your contract once you're healthy, there's less urgency to do it. And they've got four years where they can squat on it. So I think that for both the Raiders and for Crosby, it makes sense to wait. And yes, it's going to be hard to get two first round picks again, but it's a very different situation if Max Crosby is fully and completely recovered, gets a clean bill of health from the doctors, not just the team doctor, but anyone else that the team that would trade for him would be consulting with. And the Raiders, instead of getting the 14th overall pick this year and a first round pick next year. They're going to get maybe a first round pick

next year and a first round pick the year after that. So should the bears do this or what? I think it makes sense to monitor the situation. If they were interested in him before, it makes sense to see where it goes from here. And this could be a guy that you get at the start of training camp if he's healthy. But I would definitely want to be sure that this guy is good to go because the knee could be a problem. If you have that many doctors, looking at this thing after a meniscus repair and having red flags. And think about what happened here. And, you know, Max Crosby was mad when the Raiders finally shut him down at the end of the year with two games left. He'd been playing all year with this meniscus injury. And I talked to

an orthopedic surgeon last night. It's going to make it worse. And it puts stress on other elements of the structure of the knee, this incredibly complicated joint with all these different interconnecting, interlocking pieces that need to be all working right for the need to operate the way it needs to. So that's really the key. Will he be good to go? When will he be good to go? And if the bears were interested before, if and when we get to a point where we know that he's healthy now, and I would suspect that any physicals that may be conducted in the future by a prospective Max Crosby trade suitor, those are all going to be done very quietly and discreetly. and no one's going to know because nobody is going to want to be in this position where they're pulling the plug on a trade and the Raiders don't want it to happen again.

Crosby won't want it to happen again. So I think that the passage of time and if he can get healthy, that's the thing that could change everything. So the bears just need to monitor. Anyone that's interested in Max Crosby needs to see how the next few months play out. Looking at the rest of free agency, have there been anything that's really stood out as far as a big surprise or a team maybe more active than you thought or just the amount of money that's being handed out? say, I don't know, a center gets, resets the market by getting 150% of the value of the previous high for a center. Well, that really was crazy to me.

No one. And what I want to know, and I've been trying to find out, and it's hard to get to the truth on this. Everyone, as best I can tell, is saying they were at 22. The Ravens were at 22. The giants, I have heard, bowed out once it went above 22. The commanders, they were supposedly around 22. Like, if he goes to the Raiders for 27, who finished second?

Was somebody at 269, 265, 26, where was it? And they clearly overpay. A 50% bump in the market, that is ridiculous. And you can say, well, that's what a dysfunctional team has to do to kind of reset the narrative. You've got to overpay. You've got to find a way to win the jump balls. Ideally, you're a team that can offer as much and maybe even a little less than whoever else is out there for a guy to say, I'll take less and go there. And Nevada's got no state income tax.

They've got some positives, but the team has been bad. But to go 50% over, I want to know who they were bidding against, and whether or not at the end of the day they were simply bidding against themselves. A fair question. And I think also with all the reports, Mike, and we've talked about this before, regarding Tom Brady and how much he's actually running the team or running the team by proxy. I couldn't help but think of that part of this, in addition to John Spitech as a general manager.

I feel like his influence is larger than even has been reported and perhaps what we may think. I don't disagree with that. And last year, Brady managed to avoid any of the blame for the complete and total train wreck that was the 2025 Las Vegas Raiders, even though it was the first off season during which he had a piece of the team, owner Mark Davis made it clear last January, January 2025, that Tom's basically the new right-hand man.

He's the guy who's going to stabilize the organization. He's the guy who fills the shoes that were vacated by John Gruden when he was pushed out in 2021. And it's amazing that Brady has avoided that scrutiny. And I think one of the benefits of Brady being spread too thin, no one really stopped to say, hey, this is Tom Brady. Well, moving forward, if it is a mess, it's Tom Brady's mess. And I think at some point to do the job right, you got to be all in, which means giving

up your 37 and a half million per year from Fox and rolling up your sleeves and getting to work and not being involved in this and being involved in that and living in Miami. You got to move to Las Vegas at some point. You truly have to be all in to do it right. But there's also a chance if you would ever do that, it's still not going to be any better. Why do we think that because Tom Brady won seven Super Bowls, he's magically going to be this great leader and builder of a football program? I mean, the Falcons are taking a risk that Matt Ryan can do that. Was anyone else trying to hire Matt Ryan to come in and run a football operation?

I think all the way back to John Elway with the Broncos. Who was trying to hire him to be a general manager? Now, they won a Super Bowl because he was able to get Peyton Manning through the door, and he made some other good moves. But that's really the question. Number one, you can't do it right. if you're just halfway in. And number two, even if you go all in, do we have any reason to think

that Tom Brady knows how to build a winning football team? Don't ask Michael Jordan. I'll just leave it at that. I do want to ask you, on behalf of our listeners, it's still something that gets brought up pretty often.

And I know you touched on this yesterday with Mully and Haw. But the lack of compensatory picks where the NFL awards 15 teams, compensatory picks, 33 total, and the bears are not one of them. if there's a way for them to voice their frustration that's more effective than talking to us. They want to try to get a message to the leak. What do you recommend?

Well, I assume that the announcement of the compensatory picks earlier this week means that any and all available internal appeals have been exhausted, that whatever the bears could do to say, hey, 345 Park Avenue, we'd like you to reconsider this situation. To me, this is one of the most strange, unforced errors that the NFL has ever committed. There was no reason not to give the Bears the compensatory draft picks for Ian Cunningham, elevating from assistant GM to GM of the Falcons. And it only got worse when Matt Ryan says, well, hey, Ian Cunningham's running everything. And you've got both teams saying, yeah, I think the Bears should get the picks.

Think about it this way. I always look at a controversial outcome where people have legitimate reasons to complain by flipping it over. If the other thing had happened, who would have complained? If the Bears had gotten the two third round picks, who would have said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Matt Ryan's really the primary football executive in Atlanta. The Bears should not have gotten those picks. No one would have said that. So the whole thing is just stupid to me.

And it's another example of how the NFL tries to avoid true accountability for its failures in hiring, both as to coaches and executives, over decades, by coming up with these clunky, band-aid, PR-driven excuses instead of addressing the real problem. And as DeMora Smith, the former NFLPA executive director, explained to me, we had an interview at the Super Bowl, Radio Row. You can find it on our YouTube page. The problem is there's never any real accountability. It's the commissioner every February at his Super Bowl press conference with a word salad answer when the question comes up.

And then it's like Punc Satani Phil, which is perfect because this year it happened on February 2nd. You disappear for a year. Nothing happens. And then the next February, the commissioner comes out for the press conference, gets asked about it, gives his word salad response, and disappears for another year. And nothing ever changes. So the whole thing is a mess. And it's going to continue to be a mess until there's real accountability. The problem is there is not.

Oh, that's bleak. But we appreciate it regardless, Mike. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Mike. Have a great week. You too. Thanks for the fireworks as well. Mike did the fireworks on Twitch.

Well, he's got those special powers that he knows how to use that stuff. I can't even get the thumbs up to work on my end. Well, and he did it while he was talking as like a casual, you know, background. He's just like, phew. Yeah, I can make this happen. Also, everything Mike just said in that last answer, just echoing my sentiment about the NFL and just that's why you have to know when to hold them, no one to fold them, no one to walk away, no one to run.

Nah, F that. Fight the power. I mean, yeah. 224 gave us what they think is Roger Goodell's email at the risk of doing something. I'm not sure that that's it. Yeah, and then I looked and I Googled it myself and a different email address came up. Don't be giving us your ex's emails over here. Don't be giving us some email you want everybody. the horde to go email

when that's not who that is. This is like the Bears Stadium site search all over again. Don't be given us your personal vendetta's over here. Okay, maybe you should do that too. I'm going to find, does anybody have a fax machine? Maybe that's what we do.

We send a fax campaign. What's the most annoying possible communication? Facts. Not even close. Maybe a singing telegram. There are ways. Singing telegram. It's not bad.

Coming up next year on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, I don't know to call this. I don't know that it's overconfidence, but it's some sort of misstep that should have never happened. As bad as what it is, Leila. I wouldn't call it a national disgrace. I would definitely call it a national oop.

What is Team USA doing at the World Baseball Classic? That's next.