i never wanted to trade Maxx
and look i get the appeal. he turns 29 over the summer, coming off injury. get 2 first round picks (including #14 this year) to help a rebuild. i get the case for it.
but... there's a limit to just how much an NFL team can affoard to offload talent. our defense has been in a sad state for years now, and the only reason we have been a bad defense but not historically inept is because of Crosby. on a dead team that had no chance of winning, Maxx was always out there playing with his hair on fire, playing 100% of the snaps (unheard of for an edge player). always getting teammates pumped after every big play.
the epitome of a "heart and soul" player. its like if keldon johnson was also an all-nba player, there is no world where you make that trade short of a public demand from the player. if you traded crosby, the team not only lacks any A+ talent on defense, but also loses any morale, or any sense of leadership. who would have stepped up to be "the guy" in the locker room? goody two-shoes rookie Mendoza? probably not... not yet at least.
i think the team badly needs a Maxx, the same way the raiders rebuilding a decade ago absolutely needed Charles Woodson for those last 3 years. now Woodson was an old vet playing on a cheaper deal, but there was no obvious version of this to replace what Maxx gives.
setting that aside, we have Crosby locked into a long term deal. he got his new contract just a year ago, and we wisely frontloaded a lot of the new money into last year's cap sheet. he is under contract for 4 seasons, with cap hits of 36, 30, 27, 28. as long as his play doesnt fall off a cliff, after this season, he will be on very team friendly numbers and basically no dead money built into future years.
its still incredibly fucked up that the raiders entered into multiple transactions under the assumption Crosby was off the books, but they have gone ahead and honored all those agreements anyway, because Mark Davis, as inept as he could be, is ultimately a good guy and all the players love him for it. i dont think there was a need to re-sign koonce and acquire Kwity Paye if we knew we had Maxx.
