Ravens get Trey Hendrickson, but Maxx Crosby trade reversal could damage reputation

Let’s be clear: No one comes out of this aborted Maxx Crosby trade looking good.

The Las Vegas Raiders have to welcome back a still-terrific player who didn’t want to be there, believed he was headed elsewhere and could now be considered damaged goods by other NFL teams. Crosby’s future, starting with where exactly he’ll play in 2026, is now muddled with questions. And the Baltimore Ravens? They look worse than anyone.

Their decision to “back out” of the Crosby trade less than 24 hours before it was eligible for completion — and pivot quickly to Trey Hendrickson — could have wide-ranging ramifications.

Trades are subject to a player passing a physical, so if the Ravens didn’t like what they saw Tuesday when Crosby was examined in Baltimore by team doctors and had an MRI on his surgically repaired knee, they were well within their rights to back out of the deal and hold on to their two first-round picks they agreed to send to Las Vegas for the dynamic pass rusher.

They must now also deal with the scrutiny of the decision. Whether they like it or not, the optics aren’t good, and the questions are already being asked: Did the Ravens see something in that physical that prevented them from going through with the deal? Or was this a classic case of buyer’s remorse, with a team that had never before traded a first-round pick for a player realizing that sending two for a 28-year-old pass rusher two months removed from meniscus surgery was a regrettable decision, and a failed physical was its only way out?

If nothing else, the decision, revealed by the Raiders on their X account and yet to be explained publicly by anyone associated with the Ravens, has triggered plenty of skepticism around the league, and that only grew with Baltimore’s quick about-face to Hendrickson. Such skepticism threatens to permeate through the Ravens’ future dealings with other teams, players and agents.

The last thing Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti and general manager Eric DeCosta want is the organization to be labeled untrustworthy in negotiations and trade talks. Dealing with the trade fallout’s embarrassment is regrettable enough.

Then, there’s this: The Ravens won’t have Crosby. That’s the most damaging thing of all. Maybe Hendrickson, 31, proves a more than adequate replacement. But Crosby has few peers in the NFL.

Crosby, who has 69.5 career sacks and is a five-time Pro Bowler in seven seasons, was the key to DeCosta’s reshaping of this Ravens roster. He filled the team’s biggest offseason need. He gave the Ravens something they’ve lacked for years, probably since Terrell Suggs was in his prime: a dominant pass rusher capable of making a game-changing play at any moment.

As the Ravens celebrated getting that guy, numerous defensive upgrades agreed to free-agent deals elsewhere and Baltimore’s roster sprang more holes than it had last Friday night, when the news it was acquiring Crosby electrified a fan base that had grown tired of the status quo.

Since the legal tampering window opened at noon Monday, the Ravens have lost 10 free agents and signed only one, veteran guard John Simpson. They were priced out by the same Raiders for Tyler Linderbaum, Baltimore’s standout young center.

John Harbaugh, who was unceremoniously fired in January after 18 successful seasons as head coach in Baltimore, has raided his former team’s roster. He is bringing five Ravens free agents with him to the New York Giants, including tight end Isaiah Likely, Pro Bowl fullback Patrick Ricard, Pro Bowl punter Jordan Stout and versatile defensive back Ar’Darius Washington.

Pass rusher Dre’Mont Jones, tight end Charlie Kolar, inside linebacker Jake Hummel and safety Alohi Gilman are departing, too, landing with some of the Ravens’ top competitors in the rugged AFC.

Baltimore’s roster, which not long ago was being touted as the NFL’s best, currently lacks a starting center and needs at least an additional starting-caliber player along the offensive and defensive lines. The Ravens need another starting-caliber wide receiver and cornerback, two tight ends to replace Likely and Kolar, and a No. 3 safety. They need a punter, too.

But at least the Ravens had Crosby, who is a force multiplier and can mask defensive flaws. Or as it turns out, they now have Hendrickson. His credentials speak for themselves. He’s a four-time Pro Bowler with four double-digit sack seasons on his resume. He has injury questions, too; he was limited to seven games for the Cincinnati Bengals last year and had core muscle surgery in December. When healthy, he doesn’t take a backseat to too many edge rushers.

But in the fallout of the Crosby debacle, it feels far more appropriate to talk not about what the Ravens gained, but rather what they may have lost. Some of the instant and anonymous reactions from around the league about teams, agents and players now being wary of dealing with the Ravens are probably overstated.

Sure, Baltimore’s relationship with the Raiders may have sustained irreparable damage, but general managers, agents and players gravitate toward the best deals, as Hendrickson did Wednesday.

This will ultimately fade. But in the short term, the Ravens won’t be able to completely avoid the finger-pointing or shake the perception they were in the wrong here and didn’t act in good faith, even if they are fully convinced they did everything by the book.

The Ravens won’t get the benefit of the doubt, either, because they’ve been involved in similar situations before, albeit with far less accomplished players.

In 2018, they agreed to a four-year, $29 million deal with free-agent wide receiver Ryan Grant. But they scuttled the deal over concerns about his physical, specifically his ankle. Grant played 14 games for the Indianapolis Colts in 2018. His NFL career was essentially over after seeing action in only two games for the Raiders in 2019.

Two years later, Baltimore backed out of a three-year, $30 million agreement with free-agent defensive tackle Michael Brockers after a physical yielded questions about his ankle. Brockers returned to the Los Angeles Rams, missed only one game in 2020, then played parts of two seasons with the Detroit Lions.

Physicals are subjective with all 32 NFL teams. The opinion of one team’s medical staff isn’t necessarily shared by others. Some teams’ medical staffs will clear a player while others won’t. That’s the reality of it, and several trades over the years have been nullified when one player involved didn’t pass a physical.

Per league sources aware of the situation, the Ravens sought the opinion of independent doctors to review the results of Crosby’s testing. The Ravens aren’t going to publicly comment on what they found. Disclosing medical information for another team’s player is a no-go for many reasons. But the findings were concerning enough for them to back away from a trade they were seemingly ready to celebrate.

Bisciotti and DeCosta are going to be guided in these matters by the opinion of the team’s medical staff, and if they’re being told there are legitimate concerns that could impact Crosby’s readiness for the 2026 season or affect what kind of player he’ll be in future years — and the Ravens’ issue seemed to be with the latter — it’s their right to pull the plug.

You’re not trading two first-rounders for one year of Crosby. He’s a long-term investment.

But the questions remain: What did they know about the extent of Crosby’s knee injury and the meniscus surgery he had in January? Didn’t they do their homework? Didn’t they review medical records and previous MRIs? Crosby has had eight surgeries in seven years, so a thorough review of his medical records would have seemingly been step one when the trade talks with the Raiders heated up. Or did Tuesday’s tests reveal something they hadn’t seen or known before?

The fact is that the Ravens coveted and needed Crosby. They have no obvious incentive to back out of the deal, but good luck convincing anyone of that. His acquisition was part of the reason DeCosta and team officials didn’t blink or panic as they lost double-digit free agents to other teams in the days following the trade agreement.

But now they don’t have Crosby, either. And they have to deal with the fallout, which could be damaging and wide-reaching. An offseason that started with the firing of their longtime head coach via a phone call from Bisciotti now includes a failed trade for one of the NFL’s biggest stars. Nobody looks good here, least of all the Ravens.