There's a lot to be frustrated about for both fans and players on the Las Vegas Raiders during the 2025 NFL season. After another promising offseason, the Raiders are back in the bottom barrel of the league with a 2-10 record and little to no answers for how to crawl out of this mess.
Players like Maxx Crosby have already been through a lot in their careers while wearing the Silver and Black, but this year has to feel like a breaking point. The team is already near the top of the draft board and out of the playoff picture, and things are rapidly getting worse and worse.
That frustration may have boiled over a bit during Week 13's game against the Los Angeles Chargers. In the fourth quarter, Justin Herbert started to scream in Maxx Crosby's ear after converting on a pivotal third down, and Crosby gave the Chargers' quarterback a shove.
Raiders' Maxx Crosby clearly has no remorse for shoving Justin Herbert
Herbert flopped quite a bit en route to the turf, which caused a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to be called on Crosby, essentially sealing the game. While Herbert and his teammate Derwin James downplayed the incident, Crosby didn't hold back about it on his latest podcast episode.
"Yeah, (quarterbacks) are going to get special treatment when it comes to that type of stuff. If it was a lineman and he flopped like that, they probably wouldn't call it," Crosby said. "If you're gonna talk (expletive), talk (expletive). I'm running away, and I hear him. There's nobody around. They singled in the camera like this; there's nobody around, he's screaming in my ear on purpose. Of course, yeah, I'm pissed off, and I gave him a little love tap, and he flopped like crazy. He did a good job; I shouldn't have even reacted in general, so that's on me, but I respect him, bro."
It doesn't sound like the Raiders' star defensive end regrets much about how things went down. Obviously, he wishes that he hadn't reacted at all, as he said, and that the penalty didn't hurt his whole team. But Crosby is firmly in the camp that Herbert embellished the contact to draw a flag.
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Crosby is easily the most relentless player in the NFL, and for as hard as he works and all the times that he puts his body in harm's way for the Silver and Black, not once has he been accused of being a dirty or cheap player.
Those around the league revere what Crosby does game in and game out, and fans would be hard-pressed to find a single player in the NFL who has anything negative to say about him. Even Herbert and James, after the shove occurred, didn't criticize Crosby.
None of Los Angeles' offensive linemen even came to Herbert's defense or went after Crosby, which is basically standard practice for hitting a quarterback in the NFL. But that's how much respect Crosby commands, so he is free to speak his mind on an issue that has been blown out of proportion.