Maxx Crosby and the Raiders stole the headlines at the Super Bowl on Wednesday when FOX Sports insider Jay Glazer dropped the news that Crosby is most likely not going to play in Las Vegas next year – at least not for the Raiders.
For reasons only Glazer knows, he chose to drop the news on Yahoo Sports Daily in a segment with Jason Fitz, who Raider fans have come to know well over the years.
Fitz is unapologetically a Raider fan and has a known connection to Crosby. But Fitz said he was stunned by Glazer’s statement and that Glazer had not prepared anyone prior to the segment.
In a guest appearance on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness with Q Myers later in the day, Fitz shared his perspective on the news and what he felt was the message Glazer was trying to send.
Glazer didn’t prepare anyone for the news…
“We had Jay Glazer on today. We knew we were having Jay Glazer on. So what wanted to talk to Jay about was, this was my whole intent going into the question, how if you are Maxx do you listen to a new coaching staff and really buy into all of it.
But I don’t know Jay well at all, so I’m setting it up. I’m like ‘Maxx is a buddy as everybody knows.’ That’s all I said, and so he’s starts talking and he just starts flowing and could tell when you are in an interview, you can tell what they are trying to say. So I just flat out asked him. I’m like, ‘Alright, is Maxx Crosby going to be a Raider next season?’
And to my shock, we were the first interview Jay had. Jay hadn’t talked to anybody. Jay just said, ‘No.’
It was so stunning to me that it was that abrupt… so at this point I’m no longer in fan mode. I’m in interviewer mode. I’ve got to find out what that means. My question is what kind of [trade] haul would come in return? He said more than they got for Micah [Parsons]… all of this was stunning to me in the moment.”
Fitz said he texted Crosby after the interview, but didn’t hear back immediately…
“At the end of it I was like, ‘Man, that’s pretty shocking.’ That’s it. I go about my day. I’ve doing everything [and] all of a sudden, I’m getting texts from people I haven’t talked to in a decade. They’re like ‘You’re trending right now on Twitter… everybody is freaking out and I get it.
I’ll be transparent… Maxx is a buddy. I text Maxx and I haven’t heard back, so I genuinely don’t know…
He might not respond to me on it. My intent was not to create a viral moment, but if Jay Glazer is going to create that viral moment, what am I going to do?”
Fitz said he didn’t get the impression Crosby’s stance has changed since Glazer’s initial conversation with him on the day the Raiders shut him down for the season…
“Jay said that when Maxx got shut down, Maxx called Jay and said ‘Uh uh, I don’t want to be shut down.’ And Jay said he had to call [John] Spytek and say ‘Hey, man. There are certain guys you just can’t do that to. There are certain guys you can’t shut them down.’
And then in the course of the rest of the conversation, I got the vibe from Jay that this in an ongoing thing. I don’t know why Jay picked [us]. Maybe we were just the first ones to be in line. He was going to drop that to the first person that asked. I don’t know. But it definitely felt like this was not something that has gone away.”
So what’s next for Crosby and the Raiders?
Safe to say, Glazer didn’t put the information out there by chance.
He didn’t slip and say something he wasn’t supposed to say. He’s been in the business too long to make that kind of mistake.
Once Klint Kubiak is hired by the Raiders next week, he can have a conversation with Crosby, and it sounds like they will have plenty to discuss.
Maybe Kubiak will be able to convince Crosby there isn’t another rebuild coming to Las Vegas and give him hope the Raiders can turn things around as quickly as the Patriots did this year.
Just a guess… but look for Crosby to address the situation on his podcast this week or next. Safe to say, it will be one of his biggest audiences ever on the podcast.
x: @raidersbeat