the Raiders don\u2019t want to trade the 28-year-old (29 on Aug. 22) defensive end<\/a> and if the team contemplated shipping Crosby off, it would take a Micah Parsons type compensation package which is two first-round picks and a player in return.<\/p>\nBut what is absent is the emphatic response of: I don\u2019t want to be traded.<\/p>\n
Crosby is letting his actions speak for themselves and isn\u2019t going to comment further, it seems.<\/p>\n
Thus, Smith must operate under assumption he\u2019ll have elite No. 98 not only creating chaos against both the pass and run this coming season, but being the lead-by-example type since the completion of his rookie season back in 2019. Crosby paced the Raiders with 10 sacks along with 73 total tackles and a team-leading 28 stops for loss this past season. No other defender reached the five-sack mark in 2025, so Crosby\u2019s departure would leave a gaping void for Smith and Leonard to try and fill.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the elephant in the room. But as mentioned above, coaching up and developing the entire defensive line room is quite the task for Smith, too.<\/p>\n
And the Raiders\u2019 decisions on in-house free agents, free agents that hit the open market in mid-March, the draft in April, and free agency after can all help with Smith\u2019s job as defensive line coach. Defensive end Malcolm Koonce was a distant second in terms of sacks with 4.5 this past season. Recovering from a knee injury that wiped out his 2024 campaign, Koonce showed flashes of the same pass rusher later in 2025. But he\u2019s an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Tyree Wilson, the seventh overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. The 6-foot-5 and 263-pound edge rusher has worked outside and in on the defensive line racking up four sacks along with 35 total tackles with eight tackles for loss in Year 3. Wilson\u2019s usage and snap counts were a career-low in 2025 with 463 snaps compared to 525 in 2024 and 493 his rookie yar in 2023.<\/p>\n
Wilson enters the fourth \u2014 and potential final year \u2014 of his rookie contract. As a first rounder, Las Vegas does have a fifth-year option available for Wilson. The decision on whether or not the Raiders exercise that option arrives this May. That would lock-in Wilson for the 2027 season at a high-value rate that has yet to be determined. For context, first-round edge rushers from the 2022 draft had fifth-year options in the range of $15 to $17 million. At that range, that\u2019s exorbitant for a defensive end that doesn\u2019t have the production or snaps.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the continued progression of defensive tackles Jonah Laulu (25 years old, 51 total tackles, four sacks, eight tackles for loss in 2025), Tonka Hemingway (24, nine total tackles, four sacks, five stops for loss), JJ Pegues (24, 11 total tackles, one tackle for loss). There\u2019s also veterans Adam Bulter (31, 50 total tackles, one sack, three stops for loss) and Thomas Booker (26, 44 total tackles, one stop for loss, seven quarterback hits).<\/p>\n
Smith\u2019s high-energy, attention to detail, and focus on the daily grind is a good addition to Kubiak\u2019s staff in Las Vegas. It clicks with Leonard\u2019s own coaching style and the double whammy of technique and effort focus will help the defense overall.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be intriguing to see how the coaching styles and energy between Smith, Leonard and the rest of the coaching staff meshes in Kubiak\u2019s initial season as a head coach. But Smith does bring valuable coaching experience of his 14-year career so far. In 2025, the Titans run defense ranked 15th in yards allowed (1,948) and 17th in average yards per carry allowed (4.3).<\/p>\n
Over Smith\u2019s coaching tenure, he\u2019s had a hand in development of key Raiders rushers such as Khalil Mack, Yannick Ngakoue, and Crosby in assistant roles. Now Smith will have full reins in his return to Silver & Black. Oh, and he\u2019s also had to adapt to a sudden departure of a star pass rusher \u2014 when Mack was traded to the Bears. So if Crosby is shipped out, he\u2019s no stranger to missing an elite defender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Smith is no stranger to the Silver & Black. His NFL coaching career began with the Oakland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,1744,393,77335,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-764170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-las-vegas","10":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","11":"tag-las-vegas-raiders-analysis","12":"tag-lasvegas","13":"tag-lasvegasraiders","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116102045616056211","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}