Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Mike Florio ponders what it would cost to trade for Maxx Crosby

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris were joined by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk to discuss the latest NFL storylines, including what it would cost to trade for Raiders star pass rusher Maxx Crosby if he's made available.

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. Mike Floreo is always working. It doesn't matter if the NFL's in season or not. I think that the week after the Super Bowl is still somewhat the case. Doesn't matter, though. Mike's always working for you.

He is the creator, editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. He's at Pro Football Talk on X, and he joins us on the Circa, Illinois Hotline. Download the Circa sports app today. He also is on Twitch, twitch.tv.tv slash The Score Chicago. Mike, how are you? Doing great. How's everybody today? Well, we're good. we joke that Max Crosby at this point has become some sort of Pavlov's dog type of reaction for us here on the midday show.

He's our favorite non-bearer, I feel like, because everybody wants him on the bears. It's a big dream, I know. But he keeps talking like he doesn't want to play on the Raiders. So that's why we keep bringing it up. What's the latest that you gather from this dance that's been going on? I think the most significant comment came last week when Jake Laser was making the rounds at Radio Row. he has spoken in the past to Crosby. Glazer had a summary of a conversation with Crosby late in the regular season

as it relates to his reaction to being shut down for the final two games of the year because of an knee injury he played with most of the season. He takes pride in playing injured. Something happened in that moment where a guy who's been very patient with a team that constantly is rebuilding, he decided he was done. Glazer said last week, Crosby is done with the Raiders. I ran what Glazer said past somebody. in a position to know, and I was told draw your own conclusions. I don't need to be invited to do

that usually, but I did. I don't think he wants to be there. Now, there's a way to go about it. He's choosing not to go flamethrower like Miles Garrett did last year with the Browns, although the Browns ultimately threw enough money at him to get him to change his mind. I don't think Crosby is going to be swayed by that. I think he's going to be caught by this principle that he wasn't able to do the thing he loves to do for reasons that seem to be part of an effort by the Raiders to ensure they'd earn, earn the number one overall pick in the draft. They shut both Crosby and Brock Bowers down for those last two games, and they successfully finished at the top of the draft order

and obviously the bottom of the league. So I think something's going to happen here. I've got the knee injury, head surgery on, and that's going to take time to heal, but I don't know that that's going to stop anyone from doing a deal if the Raiders make him available. Part of the game is to make it look like you don't want to trade him in order to get greater value,

but if you can get two, three, four teams at the table, you don't need to act like you're going to keep him. You can do what the Texans did with Deshawn Watson when they had four teams. You name your price and you let them battle it out. So I think it's one of the stories to watch this offseason. And when you look at it from where the Raiders are right now, by the time they would get to a point where they would be competitive, because I don't think this is a quick turnaround. This isn't Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams. This is Clint Kubiak and quarterback TBD with a lot of holes in the roster.

By the time they become competitive, we're going to be close to the end, if not past the end, of Max Crosby's prime. Sell high. Get what you can for him now. And then try to use those draft picks to build a contending team. I'm with you on that, Mike. I'm so glad we get to talk to you now that the NFL season is finally in the books. Here's my question. What's the range of what you think it will cost for a team to get Max Crosby, if the three to four teams that you're talking about materialize and seriously want to go after him?

what do you think the starting point is and what do you think ultimately it might cost? Well, Glazer suggested that Max Crosby could fetch more on the trade market than Michael Parsons did. And if you do it early in the offseason, if you do it before teams have spent their cap money, if you do it at a time where everyone can be a little more deliberate and the process can play out a little bit more and you can get more, maybe you can get more because at the end of the day, the options for Jerry Jones and the Cowboys when it came to Michael Parsons for the Packers and the Eagles.

And there was no way in hell that Cowboys were going to trade Michael Parsons to the Eagles. So you do it early. You get at least a one. It's a one plus, a one plus what? That remains to be seen. A lot of that's going to be driven

by what kind of a competition emerges for Max Crosby services. But he plays the second most important position in football at the pro level. Quarterback and guy who disrupts the quarterback, Those are the two most important positions. So could they get two first round picks?

There's a chance they could. Now, one wrinkle is, hey, he's got a contract through 2029 at favorable numbers. But usually when you see a high-profile player like that get traded, he walks through the door with an expectation that there's going to be some sort of a sweetener. So it isn't enough to just say, wow, the contract's really favorable. We're not paying him $47 million a year like the Packers are paying Michael Parsons. You're probably going to have to give him some money up front. You're probably going to have to give him a raise relative to the market.

But even then, the guy is incredible. He works harder than anyone. He's got a will to win. He's told us stories at the Super Bowl, how other players on the team will say, I want to be like you. How can I be like you? And he'll say, all right,

show up at the gym tomorrow at 5 a.m. And they come for a day or two, and then they stop. So he makes that commitment to be great. And when you have a guy like that in the locker room, ideally with guys who are going to be influenced by that, it's going to make your team even better. Well, and to be fair, Mike, I will say this.

I think Bears fans drooling over the availability of Max Crosby comes from how they got Kahliel Mack into coaching change in Las Vegas. And lo and behold, Kaleel Mack comes to the Bears and it worked out very well. Mack wanted nothing to do with John Gruden. That was well documented. And as that season unfolded and the Raiders thought maybe they could prevail upon Khalil Mack to stick around. He was in his fifth year option at the time. He held out, held out, held out, and then that deal got done. So yeah, I think it's smarter if you're the Raiders

to recognize if Crosby really is done, that he means it and your best play is to maximize the trade possibilities and do the deal. This assumes the Raiders are going to realize that they need to do it. It's hard for the rational mind to predict the behaviors of the irrational and all due respect to the current power structure there. The owner is still the owner. Mark Davis is still making these calls. And there hasn't been a whole lot that he's done by way of decisions over the past 15 years that would objectively be called rational.

I'm curious as we're joined by Mike Florio. He is the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk, an article that you just published as we were coming on the air about Steve Tish and the fact that we know there's a Jeffrey Epstein problem for a lot of people right now. and Tish is one of the people who have been named. He said he had a brief association, but you've kind of uncovered that there's even more than that going on, and the NFL has a serious issue.

What can you tell us about that? Well, yeah, when the most recent Epstein Files document dump happened 13 days ago, Tish's name came up. There were some emails with, you know, kind of skeevy, purvey content, objectifying women. suggesting that Epstein was trying to connect Tish with younger women. There's been no suggestion that anyone is not of legal age, but the whole thing just looks bad. The problem for the NFL, and I don't know whether it's a problem,

this may be the way that they avoid having to do anything, there's no criminal allegation, there's no lawsuit, there's no clear, objective wrongdoing. So I think, you know, like so many other things we see in today's society, everybody involved is going to keep their head low, their mouth shut, and wait for all of our goldfish brains to focus on whatever the next scandal is. Because there's always something else, and that thing that seemed like the most important topic ever subsides.

Now, these Epstein files, they have had staying power, despite the best efforts of many to try to turn the page to a different topic, they continue to linger. And from the league's perspective, and this is something I'm going to write hopefully this afternoon, if they wanted to, if they truly wanted to, if they're serious when they say they hold owners to a higher standard than players, they could focus on the very last item in the list of prohibited activities in the personal conduct policy. I'm looking at it now. It's under Article

1, Expectations and Standards of Conduct, the very last bullet point. Conduct that undermines or puts at risk the integrity of the NFL, NFL clubs, or NFL personnel. I don't I don't think it takes a major leap of logic to say an owner who is sending these skeevy, pervy emails that objectify women with the kind of language that was being used. Now, look, does it go as far as the John Gruden emails? Maybe not, but we saw what happened to Gruden. And if owners are held to a higher standard than everyone else, I don't think it's a stretch to say that what Tish did undermines or puts at risk the integrity of the NFL

NFL teams or NFL personnel. You just got to ask yourself, is this a way we want owners of these teams to be acting? So if the league really wants to do something, it can. But here's the problem. You got other owners that won't want a standard like that to be applied to one because then the concern is it gets applied to others. And that's why it took them so long to finally wake up on Daniel Snyder. It wasn't until they thought Daniel Snyder was stealing from them through the visiting team pool and the alleged accounting irregular. that the commanders were doing to try to hide that money and move that money around. That's when it became a problem for the other owners.

But other owners are not going to want that same standard to potentially apply to them. So they're going to be very reluctant to apply that standard to Steve Tisch. Yeah, I think we're seeing that a lot, not just among NFL owners, unfortunately. Mike, I also want to ask you about something that has been a really big topic of discussion. As you know, you've gotten a lot of Bears fan feedback as well regarding Ian Cunningham and the comments that Matt Ryan made about Ian being in charge now in Atlanta. I don't think it gets more clear than that when it comes to this being a promotion for him. What's the activity that you've taken on this?

And what do you know so far? Well, this all goes back to when Matt Ryan got the job as president of football operations. Someone from, I believe, the Sun-Times reported that if Ian Cunningham, who interviewed for the job Ryan got, eventually became the GM, the Bears wouldn't get the compensatory draft picks because Matt Ryan is running the football operation. So Cunningham gets hired, there's no compensatory picks, everybody moves on. And then Ryan says that Cunningham is in charge of free agency in the draft. And that's what caused this to become an issue again. I asked the league about it earlier this week, and we've written one item on it.

And the league's position was that because Matt Ryan is the primary football executive in Atlanta, Ian Cunningham's hire as GM doesn't qualify for the compensatory draft picks. So I followed up and I asked, well, why is it different from 2022 when Terry Fontno was hired from the Saints to be the GM? Rich McKay was the president and CEO of football. Why didn't the two compensatory draft picks not get to. given to the Saints. And the league's response is basically then Terry Fontna was becoming the primary football executive. Now, Matt Ryan's the primary football executive. That's the explanation. Does it mesh with this idea that Matt Ryan is saying, hey, Cunningham's in charge? As one GM

explained to me, this is a great safe harbor for Matt Ryan where he can have his cake and eat it too. If things go sideways, I didn't do it. Ian Cunningham was in charge of free agency in the draft. And you know what? Wouldn't be the first time that a high-level executive with an NFL team was in position to take the credit when things go well. And then when things don't go well, that wasn't me. That was that guy. Yeah, it's been a point of consternation here in Chicago, as you can imagine, and really just trying to set the record straight for future opportunities,

whether it be the competitively picks for a head coaching job or anything else. Mike, I'm curious, when you look at what's going on with the salary cap going up and now teams trying to sort things out, whether that's waiving players, whether that is restructuring contracts. How difficult of a process is that for teams each and every year to go through what the Bears and everybody else is going through right now? I think it gets overblown. It's very easy to create caps based by restructuring contracts. Most contracts now, second contracts, third contracts, big money deals. They have a provision in there that gives the team the automatic right to restructure. And it's simply, and I'll keep the numbers as basic as I can, just so I don't short-circuit my own brain.

If somebody's due to make $30 million this year in salary, you take that $30 million, you reduce the salary down to the minimum for that player's years of experience, and the rest of it gets treated as a signing bonus, and the money gets spread over five years. And so 80% of those cap dollars get pushed out to future years. That's the easy way to do it. And every year, oh, what was this team? What was that team? Oh, they're never going to figure it out. And they always figured out. The Saints are the best example every year. How are they ever going to get out of this cap mess?

And they get out of it. And the thing that helps teams is the cap keeps going up and up and up. So if you can take current cap dollars and shove them into future years when the cap is higher, the relative impact of that cap dollar is lesser. That dollar I would take this year means less in a future year because the cap keeps going up and up. So that's the key. If we ever get to the point where the cap starts going down, kicking the can becomes a problem.

And we may get back to one of those times. I remember we used to hear the term salary cap purgatory. There would be teams that like, you know what, we're just screwed this year. I'm going to deal with it. And next year we'll be back. But look at the Broncos. They got to the break of the Super Bowl in the year that they were taking the bulk, I believe. It's either the bulk or close to the bulk.

It's either 30 or 50 million that they had in dead money for Russell Wilson. So you can find ways around it. that's what these folks get paid to do. And yeah, they like to say, oh, no, oh, no, how are we ever going to do it? And then they do it. And it's really not as complicated as they would have us think. And maybe they have us think that. So we're all impressed when they finally figure it out.

Mike, I have an ax to grind. And I have a feeling you might join me on this ax to grind journey. So a lot has been made about the Patriots offensive performance. Whether or not Drake May was heard, he talked about getting that injection in his shoulder before the game. and the passing game being largely inept, especially in that first half. Why isn't Josh McDaniels getting more flack for this, the assistant of the year in the NFL? Well, if Drake May really was hurt, there's your explanation. And this is one of the big problems with the NFL's current injury policy.

It is so basic and bare bones, you can comply with it and create the impression of guys fine when he's not fine. Drake May said himself last Monday night, I'm not trying to lie to you guys when I say I feel great. And in reality, no, he wasn't trying. He was being successful because he didn't feel great. You don't get a pain-killing injection because you'll want to. You don't do it preemptively. You do it because you have something that is causing you pain.

And when you have that injection of Toridol into your shoulder on your throwing arm, how is that not going to affect you? And Sims said that Chris Sims on PFT Live, He said when he was down on the field before the game, he was paying attention to Drake May warming up. He always watches the quarterbacks. I mean, he's a former quarterback. He tries to get a sense for just how they look that day. And he said he just, he sensed that Maine was never really going through the full drops. He wasn't really slinging in it. He was more deliberate. He was more careful. Yeah, and maybe because he couldn't really feel his arm. How do you throw a football accurately? How do you get the right touch, the right velocity, the right force on it?

if part of the apparatus is numb and you can't communicate from your shoulder to your brain and back again, what's really going on in there? So, you know, this should be a bigger deal. I saw that Nick Wright had some things to say about it. It really is amazing in this age of legalized gambling. We don't demand more, and we just are content to have so much inside information that can be acted upon that deceives the public on what someone's true health really is. But I think at the end of the day, people who had known, if you knew that May was going to need a tour-thall shot

to play on Sunday, Seahawks giving four and a half suddenly looks a lot better. Yeah, yeah, it does. That is absolutely true. Mike Florio, thanks as always for joining us. Thanks, Mike. Have a great week. That is Mike Floreo,

the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk, joining us here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 104-3 The Score. going to stay with football because Kevin Fishbane did a deep dive, our friend, the writer for the athletic. On the Bears, dare I say, because you just said it, the cat purgatory that may result. It's temporary. It's purgatory. That means you get out one way or the other. But here's the problem. You don't want to have to do it with the Bears most productive linebacker this season. So we'll discuss that next.