Maxx Crosby Should Want To Know Raiders Plan Before Moving Forward

Hello boys and girls, come on, come all to this post-Christmas, I guess we're calling these podcasts now. Yeah, I guess we should call them podcasts. My name is Rodney and if you already knew that, thank you so much for coming back and watching another video. And we got a lot to talk about. The Raiders of the Gift that just keeps on giving, and I'm not talking stocking stuff or I'm talking big old lump of silver and black coal. We have a bunch of different topics. As you can see on the timeline below, I have time-stamped everything so you can skip to the topics you want to, or you can watch the whole thing. That helps me out, I think it helps you out because you get a breath of knowledge into your skull. All things Raiders, we're going to talk about stuff around the NFL, we're going to talk about the Max Crasby of it all, but first, I need to tell you a couple things. At the end of this video, or toward the end of this video, there's going to be a segment where I read viewer comments from my last video. If you want your comments read in the next video, make sure you're leaving questions, comments, or concerns in the comment section. I'm going to pick out three or four or five, as many as I want, and I'm going to read them and discuss them, so make sure you're commenting away. Hit that like button and hit that subscribe button. About 50% of you guys watching are not yet subscribed to the channel, and I want to get to 12,000. We're at 11 right now, let's make that hard push to 12. Thank you guys so much for watching and supporting me thus far. This is probably the second to last video before the new year, maybe the third to last, I don't know. Let me take a drink of water and we'll get into all the topics. I was debating what order to do these in, because sometimes you want to wait a little bit until you get into the hot topic, but I'm going to go right now to the Max Crasby of it all, because he was on his podcast, I believe, The Rush, and he discussed Miles Garrett's situation, because Miles Garrett was kind of non-committal as to whether or not he wanted to return for another year in Cleveland or sign another extension with Cleveland, because he wanted to see what their plan was to compete. As bad as our situation is, I do think the Cleveland Browns situation is significantly worse because of the money they have wrapped around Deshaun Watson, however, Max Crasby, that didn't stop him from going out of his way to compare his situation to Miles Garrett's situation, and he discussed it a little bit here. I'm going to read some quotes for you from Max Crasby, and then we'll get into my take on what he was saying. Stop! My take on what he was saying, my take on what other people's takes were about what he was saying, but I'm reading here from Sports Illustrated, this is not a quote, this is the article so far. As Max Crasby mentioned on a recent episode of the Rush podcast, where he discussed the current quagmire, what a word, that reigning NFL defensive player of the year Miles Garrett is facing with the Cleveland Browns, and then here's the quote from Max. Years of inconsistency. It's new coaches every other year, and this and that, and new teammates, he said. There's been plenty of times where I'm like, damn, this defensive line is cold, and then I come back next year and every single one of them is gone. You know what I mean? It's like, where the hmm? You know what I mean? Or, sorry, what the hmm? You know what I mean? And then it's just on and on. There's a lot of things. So it's tough, bro, because I feel for Miles because he's in the same boat. Okay. My initial take on this whole thing is I don't know what you expect him to say in this situation. He's got the silver and black tattooed on his body. He's made it abundantly clear, and by the way, if this was the year to ask for a trade, it would have been right this year, this past trade deadline to the Detroit Lions. He's made it abundantly clear he does not want to be anywhere else. However, and I think he says this down the line here in another quote, NFL careers are especially the likes of people who are playing on the defensive or offensive lines. If you're a lineman or a running back, your career can come and go in an instant. And he understands that his legacy, he said it before, he wants to be one of the greatest defensive players of all time. His legacy is going to be wrapped around how well he plays in those all-pro teams, but also in how he impacts a franchise in order to win a Super Bowl. And right now, the Raiders aren't really in the position to do so. So similarly to Miles Garrett, and understandably so, he would want to see what our plan is moving forward. Now, I think Max is in a specifically unique situation because he might now understand that AP potentially is not the best option coaching-wise moving forward. And he was one of the players that stuck his neck out for Antonio Pearce, right? Antonio Pearce went on this great run a year ago to kind of take us out of position to draft any of these quarterbacks that won him the job. And now, Max Crosby might be thinking, is this really the guy to lead the ship, to right the ship moving forward? Which is contradictory to what he wants because Max Crosby also wants consistency. We all want consistency in our lives, but sometimes you've got to continually make change until you get the right people in the organization to enact that change, right? So it's kind of a double-edged sword. It's a paradox that he's found himself in, Max Crosby, where he stuck his neck out for this guy who might not be the right guy at this moment in time. Now, we'll talk about whether or not I do think Antonio Pearce is going to keep the job because my opinion of that has been wishy-washy, but I think we got a little bit of clarity on that this past season. It might not be the answer that you think I have in terms of whether I think he's going to keep the job, not whether in terms of I want him to keep the job, right? But all this to say, do I think this is doom and gloom for Max Crosby staying with the Las Vegas Raiders? I do not. I do think he's going to tough it out and try to be one of these Kobe-type players who only plays for one team. I think that that matters to him as much as winning, maybe not as much as winning, but it's right there in his priority list. He knows that this is the organization that took a chance on him, and he was one of the last draft selections by the Oakland Raiders before they went to Las Vegas, and that's important to Max, and I think he's going to be the type of person to be like, no, I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to be here. I'm going to be the reason why we write this ship. But understandably so, like I said earlier, it makes total sense for him to want to hear what our plan is moving forward. Who's going to be the coach next year? How are we going to get a quarterback to compete? Is it going to be a Sam Darnold, or a Kirk Cousins, or a Justin Fields? Are we going to try to trade up for somebody if we're not in a position to draft a Shador Sanders or a Cam Warden? He said on his podcast that he likes Shador Sanders, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he said that. So look, I do not think Max Crosby is going anywhere. Would I be surprised if out of nowhere in the offseason he asked for a trade? Yes. Would I be shocked? No. And could I blame him, ultimately? And that's the point I wanted to get across here. Could you or should you blame Max Crosby for wanting out? No. I said this last week with Josh Jacobs. Josh Jacobs got ridiculed for a couple shots he took at the organization. Look at our record and look at what the Packers are doing. He has every right to feel that way. Now, could he handle it a little differently, Josh Jacobs? Yeah, sure. But he has every right to feel that way. And Max Crosby has every right to want to do whatever it takes to win and to hear what the plan is moving forward. Now, would I let Max Crosby pick the next head coach? No. I was critical of Max Crosby for sticking his neck out for Antonio Pierce because, you know, as good as AP was last year, that doesn't mean that you're going to be a great head coach. Look at Rich Versace. I said that. Rich Versace led us to the playoffs and has yet to even sniff a coaching job since then. Wouldn't you think by now that he would have had a job? No. That's not how it works. It's very rare for interims to become the full-time head coach and for that to succeed. I couldn't think of the last time it's actually happened. And we tried it. And we'll see moving forward if AP is going to stay here. But for right now, I don't think Max Crosby is going to request a trade. I do think it's within his rights to express these opinions. And I think he's said it in a way that makes complete sense to me. So what say you? What do you guys think about all that? Make sure you comment away because, again, I'm going to be reading some from last week at the end of the video. Before I get into our draft position, because I have a take on this that probably people are going to be upset about, but it is what it is. I'm not going to lie to you guys. I'm going to be completely honest with my feelings toward all of this. Before you do that, though, make sure we're checking out the Patreon, patreon.com slash allaboardraiders. It's similar to a YouTube membership-type deal where you get videos, ad-free, early exclusive content that will never be posted up on YouTube. You become an executive producer of the show like all these beautiful people here that get to support me on Patreon and get all those different tier benefits. Link in the description below for my Patreon, patreon.com slash allboardraiders. If you're wondering why I use that instead of YouTube memberships, that's because YouTube memberships takes out a way higher percentage. Patreon is unbelievable. They're an amazing company. I've been using them for a long time here. We just passed 25 members. Let's get to 30 members. Just check it out. You don't even have to sign up. Just give it a look. Okay. The draft position, because there's been a lot of like Dylan Gabriel talk, right, and people are mad that we won this game and I understand that it would have been better for us to win or to lose this game, blah, blah, blah. I was looking at our schedule of the games that we played so far this season, right, and it occurred to me that we're pretty lucky to be as low or high, however you want to look at it, in the draft order as we are. Because if you go back into the games that we played earlier in the season, right, there are a couple games that we easily could have won. It goes all the way back to the game after the Browns when we were 2-2. The Broncos beat us 34-18. We all know how much closer that game was and the turning point with that Gardner Minshew pick six at the goal line. We would have been up like 17-3, instead it was like 10-7 and the wheels fell off. So that's one game right there that we easily could have won. The Rams game we lost by five, that's when Aidan O'Connell broke his finger. If he stays healthy that whole game, we win that game pretty easily. That's two games. Gardner Minshew then loses to the Chiefs by seven. That's another game that could have easily went a different way. That's three games right there. Then we lose to the Chiefs by two in the arrowhead because Jackson Patterson snapped the ball off of Aidan O'Connell's facemask. That's four games right there. And then Desmond Ritter loses to the Falcons by six. That's five games right there. If you take just one more of those games and put us in the win column, this isn't even a discussion about us having a top five pick. Now the reason I bring all this up is to say we're pretty lucky to be as low in the draft order as we are and if I really want to get cynical about the fans' reaction to us beating the Jaguars, there was not one person really that was pro us losing that game in arrowhead to the Chiefs. I saw every single streamer, every single fan in the comments discuss, yeah, we should lose all these games, but screw the Chiefs. I want to win this game. And when we lost this game, everyone was complaining about that ref who called a false start, including me. Everyone was complaining about Dylan Parham or JPJ or Aidan O'Connell snapping that ball. Why didn't we kick a field goal? We need a new field goal kicker because Daniel Colerson cost us the game. Let's not do this revisionist history thing now. Every single person watching that game wanted us to win. And if we were to win that game and then lose to the Bucs like we did, lose to the Falcons like we did, and then lose to Jacksonville, we'd be in the same position right now that we would have been in if we had just lost the Jacksonville game or beat the Jacksonville Jaguars or lost to the Chiefs, which is the position that we're in right now. So to all the people saying, poverty franchise, fire the owner, they can't even lose right, you kind of have to look at yourself in the mirror because do you want to lose all these games or are you okay beating the Chiefs in arrowhead? Little sneeze, have to recover from it, and we're back. I just, you know, I was thinking about that as I was laying in bed last night before, you know, thinking about topics I could talk about on this podcast. Everybody wanted to win that game, including me. So if you want to be upset about us winning games we shouldn't have won, right, that affects our ability to get Shudderer-Sanders, you got to stop being so hypocritical about us playing division rivals, right? Like nobody cares about the Broncos or the Chargers, yeah, I get it. But when you play the Chiefs in arrowhead on Black Friday with 30 million people watching, everybody wants to win that game, don't lie, do not lie. I'm not for this revisionist history because if we would have won that game and then lost to Jacksonville, we'd be in the same exact situation, right? Now I get it, it's three games later that we had lost that game and we won, we beat Jacksonville, so it's easier late in the season to say, well, we lost to the Chiefs so we should have lost it. That's not how it works, dude. There's a certain moment when you're okay with accepting losing out, right? And that's one of these moments. And everybody wanted to beat the Chiefs. We were lucky to have lost that game, we were lucky to have lost a lot of these games. And we'll get into the Aidan O'Connell of it all and what our record maybe would have been like if he played the whole season. But I just want to, I mean, that's not a crazy topic to talk about, but it is something that I think a lot of fans were like, we couldn't even lose right! All those people saying they wanted to beat the Chiefs, don't lie, don't lie. Segment time, on the train, off the train, I did this a couple weeks ago, I've yet to do it since then because I got sick, blah, blah, blah, but you get the gist of it. Who am I on the train for, who am I off the train for, or in this case, I am on the train of believing sort of this rumor mill and it's about Antonio Pierce. I am now on the train, how do I say this? I do not want him to be the next head coach if we can get a Vrabel or a Johnson, but I am now on the train of believing that it's going to happen whether or not I want it to happen. I do believe that Antonio Pierce is going to be the next head coach of us in 2025. The reason I'm saying that is because there are a bunch of rumors and reports that the Saints want Mike Vrabel and that the Bears want Ben Johnson and that this team wants this head coach and blah, blah, blah. Why are there no reports coming out about who we want? There have been reports about whether or not Antonio Pierce can keep the job, it's a little iffy, but we're not lumped in with any of these teams, the Jets with Vrabel, the Saints with Vrabel, the Bears with Ben Johnson. We're not lumped in with any of these, which makes me believe that we're not looking. Now, if we're considering firing Antonio Pierce, we better be doing our due diligence to be looking at one of these top guys. I've also seen Liam Cohen's name thrown around there. He's not terrible. It's just not what I would prefer. I would prefer a Ben Johnson or a Mike Vrabel. Mike Vrabel is my number one, Ben Johnson is my number two. Maybe Liam Cohen would be my number three. Now, Diana Rossini, who's an NFL insider, I believe she works for the Athletic now, she has said that there are specific teams that are going out of their way to make sure that they aren't tampering, that they are doing their due diligence to not talk to anybody until their season is over, until that window during the playoffs opens where you can interview people, right? And we'll see when that Black Monday or whatever happens, if Antonio Pierce gets fired, and then the rumors of us interviewing Ben Johnson or Vrabel or whatever will start. I do think there's a chance we are in that position to not want to tamper because the Jon Gruden thing happened fast, and maybe the league was like, hey, we're going to let it slide and make sure next time you're going to hire somebody, you fired a person that you're going to fire before talking to the next person you're going to hire, right? It's just weird to me that we are not in any of these real credible rumors about wanting this candidate or maybe interviewing this guy. Now, you might say, well, that would be tampering, wouldn't it? You can't say I'm looking at this guy when you still have a head coach, sure. However, all of these teams, right? The Jets have an interim, right? The Saints have an interim. You know, I'm starting to talk myself out of it now. The Saints, the Bears, and the Jets all have interim coaches, so it would make sense for these teams to be in the rumor mill. Okay, that does make sense now that I think about it. We don't have an interim coach. We have a full-time head coach, Antonio Pearce. Okay, right. There wouldn't be any other teams that are rumored to be looking at these guys with head coaches that are already in place. I'm talking to myself, I now might be off the train on my own on the train. Okay, that does make sense. However, the Antonio Pearce of it all kind of has slowed. The last thing we heard was that Telesco and AP will be evaluated separately, which I think is the right move. Okay, but I kind of talked myself out of it now. Okay, that does make sense. All the teams in that rumor mill have interim head coaches. Okay, all right. Well, you're going to get two off the trains then. Because after the film of the Jacksonville game, and look, this guy's made a lot of good plays for us, exciting plays. I'm off the Jack Jones train. I don't want him to be a significant part of our rebuild going forward. He makes a lot of good plays, and he's a vibrato guy, and he's a raider through and through, right? The problem that I have is that I don't want one of my top corners to be like a boomer bust guy. I want you to just lock down your guy. And there was times in the Falcons game and the Jags game where he's just getting cooked because he's biting on the double move. And I don't want explosive plays happening on our number one corner. Now, Jaquorian Bennett, when he comes back and is completely healthy, he's probably going to be our number one corner because he's taking a big leap. And I'm not going to spend too much time on the Jack Jones of it all. But I do not want our premier number one or number two corner to be somebody who is a boomer bust guy. And if you watch the film, he's either making a great player or he's getting cooked for a touchdown. And I'm not OK with that. Go spend some money on a free agent cornerback who's actually going to play the position instead of just gambling the whole time. OK, so let's get into, how do I want to do this? You know what? I'll do viewer comments first because it's raider specific. And then I'll get into around the NFL, which is just one topic, not raider specific that I do want to give my opinion on because to me, it's absolutely ludicrous and insane. But let me pull up these user comments. And like I said, make sure we're commenting away on this video to get your comments read the last video or next video, I should say. The first comment comes from, and I'm just going to read this name and move on, Crackhead Joe Dirt. And he says, at this point, draft the number one wide receiver or an alignment in the first round. Let Aidan O'Connell compete against Fields or Cousins on a one year deal. I do think this is a real potential. Only if we're not able to draft a quarterback in the first round and we take a Dylan Gabriel or Jackson Dart in the second or the third and that person is not yet ready. Now, drafting a receiver or alignment with our first pick, that's probably going to be a good player, similarly to a Brock Bowers. I don't think he's going to have a Brock Bowers type impact. But I do think that would be another good piece to add to the puzzle of our rebuild moving forward. Now, I understand people don't want to go back to the Gardner Minshew versus Aidan O'Connell of it all. I do think Cousins, Fields, maybe a Darnold, obviously a Darnold would be better than Gardner Minshew. However, if it turns out to be Aidan O'Connell next year, I don't think that is the worst case scenario in terms of who could play the quarterback position because if I get to this next comment by Marcus Cooper 9544, he kind of called me out on what I said was the doomsday scenario last week. This is what I said. This is what his comment is. Your quote-unquote doomsday scenario, running it back with AOC, if we started this season with O'Connell and hired an offensive coordinator that didn't utterly suck and had a bit better luck with injuries and turnovers, we could easily have had a winning record right now and be fighting for a playoff spot. That's hardly doomsday. Going forward, everything depends on us finding a good OC slash play caller. Now, we're going to table that comment for just one second. I'm going to go back to the schedule because I haven't really done this. And this is the what-if game that I don't really love to play. But let's just go through the schedule here. The first game, the Chargers beat us 22 to 10. Gardner Minshew in that game turned the ball over multiple times. One time was a backwards pass that he threw when we were going in position, where we were in position to go in and double dip, score, get the ball, half score again. That is a game I think could have went a different way if Aidan O'Connell played. So that's one game. The Panthers game, I don't know if we win that game no matter what. Andy Don was a man possessed. Whatever. We lose that game no matter what. The Broncos game I already talked about. Gardner Minshew throws a pick six in the end zone. Again, I just don't think Aidan O'Connell is doing that, right? So that's another game that could have went a different way. The Steelers game, Aidan O'Connell did start. Now, I didn't think that was completely fair with throwing him in that situation because that was a great game, although he didn't have a great game or that was a great defense that we were playing. He didn't have a great game. We'll call that a loss. The Rams game, we would have won. We lost by five. Aidan got hurt. The Chiefs game, we could have won. These are could have or would have wons, right? Or wins. The Bengals game, we got killed. They're a better team than us. The Dolphins game, smoked. Better team than us. Broncos game, not close. Whatever. The Chiefs game, and now Aidan's played the rest of these. Except the Falcons game, which he has not played, okay? So this is five wins, right, that we could have or should have had. Let's give us three of those wins. Our record now is, we have three wins, six and whatever, okay? Six and nine. Six and eight. Six, seven, eight. Six and nine. Beat the Saints, seven and nine. Beat the Chargers, eight and nine. Would that have got us into the playoffs? No. Maybe there's a couple other games here on the schedule that we would have been more competitive in if Aidan played the whole time. I'm not saying that Aidan O'Connell would have led us to the playoffs, maybe like Marcus is suggesting here. However, I do think if Aidan played the whole season, this team right now would have six to seven wins. Again, that doesn't get you into the playoffs, and that ultimately just hurts your draft stock anyway. So maybe it's better that he didn't play the whole season so we have a higher pick. All that to say, with this higher pick, if we drafted a McMillan to be our number one If we use this $100 million to build up the roster, now the seven wins you had with Aidan this season could turn into nine or ten next season. Ultimately, I do not think he can be the franchise quarterback moving forward. Whether or not I think he could be is kind of irrelevant. I do think we need to put ourselves in the position to get a more explosive, game-changing athlete at the quarterback position. I don't really want to do the Derek Carr thing again, but that doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge that we would have been a better team with Aidan this season. Cam Ward or Shadur Sanders has a higher ceiling than Aidan O'Connell. There's no doubt about that. I also think next year Drew Aller has a higher season. So maybe you're running back with Aidan this season, try to trade up to get Drew Aller next season. But I don't disagree with what you were saying here, Marcus. Wow. I guess I got two comments from Marcus here. I didn't even know about that. I didn't notice that. Marcus follows up by saying, Well, Marcus, I understand your concern with going Darnold and McCown. I suggest that we do that because people have been saying, well, Sam Darnold is a system quarterback. He's had the best season of his career in this system. And I said, well, then bring the quarterback coach from the Vikings over, which is Josh McCown, former NFL quarterback. He was pretty good. Now Marcus said, Well, my question to you would be, Yes. And it didn't work out then, and it didn't work out here. So I don't think we're able to say for certain that calling plays means you're going to be a good coordinator. Because like you said, we don't want to be in a Luke Getzey situation. Luke Getzey came from a situation where he called plays. The reason why I'm looking for somebody who has not called plays yet is because it's very unlikely for you to get an offensive coordinator right now who is calling plays in an elite level to leave their current position to become just another offensive coordinator. Those offensive coordinators like a Liam Conner or Ben Johnson are going to be head coaches. So it's going to be very difficult for you to find an offensive coordinator to leave his position to just have a lateral move to be the offensive coordinator of the Raiders. Also, you got to look at the system that's being run. I suggested Wes Welker. Now the Dolphins, he's the wide receivers coach for the Dolphins. The Dolphins have an okay system, but it is nowhere near the success that Kevin O'Connell had with Sam Darnold and Josh McCown building the offense they have. They have 13 wins. I don't know how many system quarterbacks can just rip 13 wins like that. As troublesome as Sam Darnold has been early in his career, he has shown that with the right weapons in place, he can be an elite level quarterback. And I don't think you guys are giving Sam Darnold the credit he deserves by saying he's just a system quarterback. However, if that is concerning to you, let's go get the guy who's been running the system with Sam Darnold and Josh McCown. So that's kind of my thought process on that. Okay, so the last thing I want to touch upon here before we get out of here is something around the NFL that's going on, and it's the MVP race. And right now it seems to be Lamar Jackson versus Josh Allen. Now I'm going to tell you right now, unless Josh Allen has two catastrophically bad games the last two weeks, and I'm pretty sure he plays like the Jets and the Patriots, Josh Allen is going to win his MVP. The voters do not vote logistically. They know that Lamar has two. They're not going to give him a third. Even if he deserves a third, they're going to give it to Josh Allen because he doesn't have one yet. However, that's not my take on the situation. My take is this. In what universe, and Lamar's having a great year, maybe a career year. In what universe is Lamar Jackson getting his third MVP this season before Josh Allen wins his first? And the reason I say that, and it's very simple, look at what the Ravens and the Bills did in the offseason. The Ravens added one of the best running backs of all time, and their offense got significantly better. Excuse you, please stop. Hey, hey, thank you, stop. My dog. The Bills took away Josh Allen's number one receiver, one of the better wide receivers of the last five years in Stephon Diggs. And Josh Allen has played some of the best football we have ever seen. Josh Allen is the first quarterback in multiple games in succession to have two rushing touchdowns and two passing touchdowns. Josh Allen, not Lamar Jackson, the guy who just broke Michael Vick's all-time quarterback rushing record, who is the quarterback who runs the ball the most. Lamar Jackson has never done that. Josh Allen is the one who has done that this past season. He has taken a team who was not favored to win the division, and skyrocketed them to what I think is the best team in the AFC. Now we'll see what happens in the playoffs. Will they finally be the team to dethrone the Kansas City Chiefs in Arrowhead other than the Cincinnati Bengals? However, that's completely irrelevant to the MVP, because the MVP is a regular season award. And thank goodness for that, because if that wasn't the case, if we waited till the playoffs ended before voting for the MVP and took those into account, Lamar Jackson would have zero. Josh Allen will be your 2024-25 MVP, and he should be. And that's all I got for you guys. How long was this? About 30 minutes. That's around the range I'm looking for, 30 to 45-ish. Thank you so much for watching. Drop likes, drop comments, make sure you're joining that Discord. Oh, last week, or last time, I said something so you guys could comment to see how many people got to the end of the video. I gave you a band suggestion, which was Lawrence. This week, I'm going to give you a movie suggestion. What do I want to suggest? I was going to say Challengers. Let's do Saturday Night. It's the SNL movie. I didn't grow up watching SNL. I didn't know anything about the first night where they performed on SNL Live. It's an incredible movie. It's kind of like The Social Network. It's fast-paced like this. Go check it out. Comment below what the movie suggestion was that I said to make sure that I know that you're watching to the very, very end. Join the Patreon. Hit that subscribe button if you're new. Please be sure to subscribe. I just said that. It is free. I'll throw no charge to you. I love you guys. I'll see you next time.