The 2026 regular season is still a little more than 170 days away, yet the Baltimore Ravens have already managed to create one of the most confusing football narratives of the entire year. The issues that continue to stem from their last-second withdrawal from a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders for Maxx Crosby has yet to be resolved in the mind of the public, and according to Crosby himself, neither he nor the fans may ever truly know what happened that day.
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“No one will really ever admit, on either side, what the real truth is,” Crosby noted during one of his most recent podcasts. Given the quickness with which the Ravens were able to sign Trey Hendrickson right after their announcement about Crosby, many have been skeptical of the franchise’s claims that Crosby simply failed his physical, but not Cam Newton, who argued that Crosby’s trip to Baltimore was actually a rather normal one.
“Every single trade still pends off of passing a physical, right? …That team wasn’t obligated to show you to meet the owner, to meet the GM, or to even meet the head coach. What you got a harsh reality of? This happens. Your experience that you went through? It happens more than not.”
In referring to his older brother, C.J. Newton, the former Carolina Panther noted that he had to have a “heart-to-heart” conversation with him during a tryout period for the NFC South franchise. The topic? The realistically impossible odds of becoming a member of an official NFL roster.
“There’s unrestricted free agents, or un-drafted free agents. There’s free agents. There’s people that’s trying out for a team that has an unbelievable journey to try to make the team,” Newton explained. Believing that there is an “80% chance” that any given player could be passed over for someone else, the former regular season MVP winner ultimately exclaimed that “What you just went through Maxx Crosby, is what the average NFL player goes through, unfortunately.”
Likening Crosby’s situation to that of Aaron Rodgers’ in 2025, where the New York Jets asked the quarterback to travel across the country for an in-person meeting just for it to conclude with his dismissal in matter of minutes, Newton suggested that upper-echelon players have simply gotten too used to “receiving presidential treatment.”
Even though it may not be very comforting, Newton’s take is still an honest one, and likely an important one for current players as well. For better or worse, it’s a reminder that, at the end of the day, the NFL is a business first and foremost, and that the gridiron has never once, nor will it ever, owe you anything.
