The Raiders are coming away from arguably the most pivotal offseason the organization has experienced in decades, and based on a report this week, a lot of their good fortune came at the expense of the Dallas Cowboys.
According to The Athletic’s Jon Machota, the Cowboys were trying to sign both Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker prior to both linebackers agreeing to deals with the Raiders in March.
‘The pass rush won’t be what it was with Micah Parsons, but it should be improved from last season. Inside linebacker is the spot that probably still needs a little help. It would be nice to have a team captain-type green dot linebacker. The Cowboys obviously wanted one, making a run at Nakobe Dean, Quay Walker and Devin Lloyd in free agency,” Machota rote this week.
Machota isn’t the first to report the Cowboys wanted Dean and Walker, but combined with an ESPN report following Jerry Jones’ efforts to trade for Maxx Crosby, there’s no doubt the Raiders spoiled some of the Cowboys’ biggest ideas of the offseason.
“The Raiders had two teams willing to swing for the fence [Crosby]; the Cowboys and the Ravens,” ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler said the day after the Baltimore deal was announced.
“The Ravens were willing to give up the two first-round picks, the Cowboys simply were not and I was told the Cowboys were low key devastated. They really wanted Maxx Crosby. They were eyeing him for months, but they just had a tipping point. It was a first-round pick and a second-round pick. They tried to involve a veteran player or two to sweeten the deal. The Raiders didn’t want to that. They simply wanted the youth and the draft picks.”
It was reported that the Cowboys’ team doctor was one of the doctors the Ravens consulted with prior to backing out of the Crosby deal, but Jones said in March he wouldn’t rule out the Cowboys returning to the trade table down the road.
For now, Crosby is expected to remain in Las Vegas, but not everyone is buying the idea that Crosby and the Raiders are committed to making it work beyond this year. In theory, if Crosby was happy to be traded once, why wouldn’t the sides be willing to go down that road again?
For months, Crosby and the Raiders downplayed trade rumors, but Sports Illustrated insider Albert Breer was the first to report that Crosby actually requested a trade at the end of the 2025 season.
“Quietly, after the season, Crosby requested a trade, intimating to owner Mark Davis, with whom he shares a very close relationship, and GM John Spytek that he wanted to work with the team and find a solution that worked for everyone,” Breer reported in March.
“[Crosby] even told Davis that he wanted to help the team win, ‘even if I’m not here.’ Crosby said he didn’t want things to get hostile or play out in the media. The arrival of Klint Kubiak didn’t move the needle much. Crosby had a good meeting with the Raiders’ new coach on the day he was introduced to the media, and was happy for his position coach, Rob Leonard, when Kubiak promoted him to defensive coordinator. But by then, it would have been hard to get Crosby to want to stay.”
“He never wanted to leave Vegas,” Breer continued, “but that line was crossed in December, and the idea of going through another regime change (Kubiak would’ve been his sixth head coach) became far less appealing, even as much as he loved Davis…”
More than likely, the decision makers in Las Vegas will circle back to fielding trade inquiries for Crosby ahead of the 2026 trade deadline and there’s a good chance the All-Pro pass rusher’s trade value will go up around that time, too.
Last month, Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers said he didn’t expect Crosby to be traded before the draft but said he thought Crosby’s trade value would spike again in October.
“Two things can be true. First of all, [teams] will try to low ball the Raiders [for Maxx Crosby], but I think that John Spytek has already proven that he’s going to stand his ground and say, ‘Look, if you want my best player, you’re going to have to pay a king’s ransom for him,” Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast.
“I also think that deadlines push deals. I think the trade deadline will increase his value because the team will get desperate [and say] ‘We need 98.’ They’ll be late [first round] picks and a team might do that. A team might offer that. I think that that’s what’s going to happen,” Myers continued.
“I still honestly don’t believe he’s going to get traded, but I know those conversations will definitely happen leading up to the trade deadline. Especially if a team like Dallas is successful. A team like Buffalo feels like they’re really close. Teams like that. It won’t be some scrub team. It’ll be like the Bears all of a sudden are having a really good year… That’s how I envision this thing playing out. Some team that feels like that they’re that one edge away from being over the top. And that’s the one that’s going to go try to make a move right before the trade deadline.”
Will teams have confidence in Crosby’s knee five months from now?
If Crosby’s future in Las Vegas is called into question again, it will be interesting to see how teams feel about his surgically repaired knee becasue based on a report from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the long-term prognosis for meniscus repairs isn’t great.
“I’m not a doctor, but in very simple terms, when you have a meniscus trim, that’s just cutting out the injured piece of the meniscus. Think of it like a hangnail. It’s bugging you. You get some clippers and you clip it off,” Pelissero said on the Rich Eisen Show in March.
“Meniscus repair would be like the really deep hangnail where it’s starting to bleed, and you know the skin’s going to fall off and you wrap it up with a Band-Aid and you try to keep it tight,” Pelissero continued.
“I talked to one doctor who’s very heavy into the injury data who said meniscus repairs have a 50 percent failure rate after one year, 80 percent failure rate after four years based upon their data. And again, that doesn’t mean the knee falls apart. It’s not like a failed ACL reconstruction, but basically it means you’re going to have less healthy cartilage in your knee. Your body cannot generate new healthy cartilage.”
x: @raidersbeat