For the Raiders and this Ravens fan, the timing couldn’t have been worse.
If you’ve been following the NFL free agency the past couple days, you know that the biggest story has been the Baltimore Ravens backing out of a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders for star defensive end Maxx Crosby.
Long story short, the Ravens had previously agreed to trade two first round picks to the Raiders for Crosby, one of the best defensive players in the game. But Crosby was coming off of a knee injury that landed him on the injured reserve for the last two games of the 2025 season, a decision that Crosby wasn’t happy with but was widely assumed to be the Raiders trying to preserve his health and trade value.
Crosby underwent meniscus surgery after the season was over, and by all accounts his recovery is ahead of schedule. All accounts except for those of the Baltimore team doctors, apparently, because last night the Raiders dropped the bombshell that the Ravens had backed out of the trade after Crosby had failed his physical with his new team.
Then this morning, the Ravens signed free agent defensive end Trey Hendrickson from the Cincinnati Bengals, and it became pretty clear what was happening: The Ravens saw they could get a relatively comparable player in Hendrickson for cheaper, and decided to back out of the Crosby trade by failing him on his physical.
It’s a cold world out there.
Now, the Ravens knew that Crosby was just a few weeks removed from surgery when they agreed to the trade in the first place. And the rest of the NFL seems to be pretty disgusted by this move from the Ravens, with plenty of anonymous quotes from other teams flying around that seem to indicate the whole stunt has made it less likely for GMs to want to do business with the Ravens in the future.
But Ravens fans are no doubt fine with the outcome, because they get to keep their two first round draft picks and get a player who, while not quite as good as Crosby, is solid nonetheless.
But there’s at least one Ravens fan out there who also isn’t happy with his team…
Back on March 4, before the whole saga began, a guy named Nate tweeted that he would shave his head if the Ravens traded for Maxx Crosby:
Of course at the time he didn’t actually expect it to happen. But after the blockbuster trade went down, Nate kept his word and went through with his promise to shave his head. And last night, he showed off the results…and it became clear why he didn’t want to go through with it.
Now, let’s look at the timestamps here. Nate posted his picture at 7:23 PM eastern time yesterday…and at 8:02 PM, the Raiders announced that the Ravens had backed out of the trade.
Talk about terrible timing. Bet he wishes he had waited until the contract was signed before going through with the bet.
