PHOENIX — Baltimore Ravens team president Sashi Brown said Monday that the organization was disappointed to not go through with the acquisition of star pass rusher Maxx Crosby from the Las Vegas Raiders, but he doesn’t believe the aborted deal is proof that changes need to be made with the trade process.
“I think this is how it should be handled. I really do,” Brown said during a nearly 25-minute Q&A session with Baltimore-area reporters on Day 1 of the NFL league meetings. “We’re not aiming for that result, but when you have a high-stakes transaction like that, everybody needs to understand what conditions you are moving forward on. I won’t say much more than that. We’re disappointed that it didn’t go through, but we move on to the next opportunity.”
Having prioritized improving their pass rush this offseason, the Ravens agreed to deal two first-round picks to the Raiders for Crosby on March 6, three days before the start of the legal tampering window and five days before trades are allowed to be finalized at the start of the new league year.
The agreement sent shockwaves around the league, largely because of Crosby’s stature — the five-time Pro Bowler is regarded as one of the top defensive players in the league — and also because of Baltimore’s long-standing reluctance to trade prime draft assets for a player. The Ravens had never in team history traded a first-round selection for a player.
Thus, the Ravens’ decision to pull out of the deal and pivot to signing Cincinnati Bengals pass rusher Trey Hendrickson to a four-year, $112 million contract drew a ton of scrutiny and criticism. The Ravens haven’t specifically addressed their reasons for backing out of the trade, but multiple league sources confirmed that Crosby failed the team’s physical and Baltimore’s decision-makers had concerns about the long-term status of Crosby’s surgically repaired knee.
“As (general manager Eric DeCosta’s) said, we were incredibly excited and just as equally, if not more, disappointed that we were unable to pull off that transaction and bring Maxx to Baltimore,” Brown said. “I’m not going to go too much deeper into that.”
Brown said there have been things misconstrued about the team’s decision, but the Ravens won’t comment on them publicly.
“We understand the need to report on these high-profile cases,” Brown said. “We’re going to trust ourselves, and we have a ton of respect for Maxx and treat all of this with the right privacy and respect and dignity that it deserves.
“There are steps that teams take consistently. We just saw another team go through a very similar circumstance. This is not the first time it’s going to happen. It will not be the last. I think everybody wants to be prudent through our processes. It’s unfortunate and rare, especially in a high-profile case like this, but that’s why the processes are in place.”
Brown was seemingly pointing to the Cleveland Browns pulling out of a free-agent agreement with defensive end A.J. Epenesa because of concerns about his physical. Of course, the Crosby situation was magnified much more, given his credentials and the draft currency involved in the deal.
When informed that the Ravens have taken a lot of hits in the court of public opinion, Brown joked that he hadn’t noticed. He echoed what DeCosta said earlier this month, saying he doesn’t believe the failed trade will affect the team’s relationships around the league.
“We’ve got strong and long relationships across the league,” Brown said. “We have emphasized the importance of doing things the right way. We’ll continue to do that, and we understand that it is a headline story because of its profile and significance.
“We believe our relationships, to the extent that you need time to repair them, people understand who we are and what we’re about. Our locker room understands that as well, but when you have high-profile transactions like this and opportunities like this, it’s unfortunate that sometimes these things do happen. No fault of Maxx’s or ours or the Raiders, it’s just (how) it played out.”