PHOENIX \u2014 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\u2019t believe the aborted deal is proof that changes need to be made with the trade process.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is how it should be handled. I really do,\u201d Brown said during a nearly 25-minute Q&A session with Baltimore-area reporters on Day 1 of the NFL league meetings. \u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019t say much more than that. We\u2019re disappointed that it didn\u2019t go through, but we move on to the next opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having prioritized improving their pass rush this offseason, the Ravens agreed to deal two first-round picks<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The agreement sent shockwaves around the league, largely because of Crosby\u2019s stature \u2014 the five-time Pro Bowler is regarded as one of the top defensive players in the league \u2014 and also because of Baltimore\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Thus, the Ravens\u2019 decision to pull out of the deal and pivot<\/a> to signing Cincinnati Bengals pass rusher Trey Hendrickson to a four-year, $112 million contract drew a ton of scrutiny and criticism<\/a>. The Ravens haven\u2019t specifically addressed their reasons for backing out of the trade, but multiple league sources confirmed that Crosby failed the team\u2019s physical and Baltimore\u2019s decision-makers had concerns about the long-term status of Crosby\u2019s surgically repaired knee.<\/p>\n \u201cAs (general manager Eric DeCosta\u2019s) 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,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to go too much deeper into that.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown said there have been things misconstrued about the team\u2019s decision, but the Ravens won\u2019t comment on them publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand the need to report on these high-profile cases,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are steps that teams take consistently. We just saw another team go through a very similar circumstance. This is not the first time it\u2019s going to happen. It will not be the last. I think everybody wants to be prudent through our processes. It\u2019s unfortunate and rare, especially in a high-profile case like this, but that\u2019s why the processes are in place.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n When informed that the Ravens have taken a lot of hits in the court of public opinion, Brown joked that he hadn\u2019t noticed. He echoed what DeCosta said earlier this month, saying he doesn\u2019t believe the failed trade will affect the team\u2019s relationships around the league.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got strong and long relationships across the league,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe have emphasized the importance of doing things the right way. We\u2019ll continue to do that, and we understand that it is a headline story because of its profile and significance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe our relationships, to the extent that you need time to repair them, people understand who we are and what we\u2019re about. Our locker room understands that as well, but when you have high-profile transactions like this and opportunities like this, it\u2019s unfortunate that sometimes these things do happen. No fault of Maxx\u2019s or ours or the Raiders, it\u2019s just (how) it played out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Baltimore Ravens team president Sashi Brown said Monday that the organization was disappointed to not go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,117,2282,7,393,6,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-843779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-ravens","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-ravens","10":"tag-baltimoreravens","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-ravens"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116320473130476016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843779","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=843779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}