Botched Maxx Crosby Ravens Trade Deal Highlights Flaws in NFL Transaction Calendar

The NFL has altered the way it kicks off its formal transaction period in recent years, including adding a “non-tampering” negotiating window, but this week’s debacle with the Baltimore Ravens pulling out of a verbally agreed upon trade for Maxx Crosby has intensified calls for the league and NFL Players Association to consider further changes.

Football is the most physical and violent sport in the US, with medical testing paramount in consummating trades and signings, especially during the start of the league year when teams must get compliant with the salary cap and brace for a flurry of transactions. 

For years many NFL executives and top agents have grumbled about why this process doesn’t begin earlier in the calendar and some have suggested making the annual scouting combine the start of free agency and something of a medical clearinghouse for teams and player agents to more easily engage in face-to-face open negotiations. 

The NFL and NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement has anti-tampering language and has traditionally set the start of the “League Year” in mid March, a few weeks after most every key figure in the league has just gathered in Indianapolis for the scouting combine.

The Ravens are blaming pulling out of the Crosby deal on a failed physical, despite the entire league knowing Crosby wouldn’t be fully cleared for football activities in mid-March after undergoing a knee procedure. The Ravens agreed to the trade terms late last week and waited until Crosby flew to Baltimore on Tuesday to conduct a more formal battery of tests on him; at a time when they were also negotiating with edge rusher Trey Hendrickson, who ended up being Crosby’s cheaper replacement. 

Of course, general managers around the NFL believe the Ravens simply got cold feet about moving two first round picks and made a football decision, and not a medical one. But the messy situation, which impacts other free agents and other markets, has renewed calls for new regulations and a rethink of how this business is conducted.

Is there a better way to start the league year?

“Why do we pretend every year that we aren’t doing business at the combine, anyway?” asked one top agent who annually represents some of the elite talent on the open market. 

“Why are they really accomplishing with this anti-tampering window? What if we started the league year before the combine? Free agents can come in, meet with teams in person. Every medical staff is is already there.”

Another agent said: “It’s an interesting idea. The combine isn’t as valuable to teams as it used to be outside of the medical testing (for incoming draft picks), so you’re seeing more teams keeping their football people at home. If you turned the combine into more of how baseball does it. And everyone comes to Indianapolis and you can start doing contracts then, it would probably be more efficient for everyone.”

The NFL likes to have signature events spread out in every month, for strategic media and broadcast purposes. If/when expansion to 18 games in the regular season occurs the calendar will extend and the combine would likely be pushed to March. Would seem like the perfect time to have the league year start sooner as well, and it could still stay in early March, perhaps. 

Allowing a central hub for an injured player like Crosby, who could be granted permission to meet with other clubs will still under contract if also granted permission to help facilitate a trade, to interact with club officials and medical personnel would eliminate the inherent lags in the current system that create ample potential for debacles like this scuttled trade to continue.

“I’m not condoning what (Ravens general manager Eric) DeCosta did at all,” said one NFL general manager. 

“It’s bullshit. But you can get away with it, and you’re never going to be penalized for it, because we are forced to do things backwards this time of year. I don’t think they give a shit in New York (at the league office), but there’s got to be a better way to do this.”

No system is perfect, and general managers who get cold feet and renege on their word won’t be stripped from the game merely by altering the calendar. But eliminating some of the lags and incentivizing in-person negotiations, especially in situations where the medicals are in question, might be a good place to start.