Las Vegas Raiders All-World pass rusher Maxx Crosby has been in the headlines due to a rift between him and the organization, caused by the team’s electing to sit him out for the final two games of the season, a decision he made it known he disagreed with on Monday.
“For me, my love for the game has been since the day I started, since I could remember,” Crosby told Jim Gray on SiriusXM’s Let’s Go! podcast. “My whole life has been football and sports. That has been my obsession since I was a little kid. Yeah, I’ve always — I mean, I’m an addict to the core. I’ve had an obsessive mindset and that addictive personality my whole life.
“But when it comes to football, there’s certain things that I truly believe in, and I feel like there’s core principles that you gotta live by, and there’s a certain way the game needs to be played. And there’s a certain approach that you have when you go into the field. And the way you look at it, from my perspective, is you play to win.
“You play for your teammates, you put everything you have into the game, no matter what it is. There’s gonna be bumps and bruises. You’re gonna be banged up. That is a part of the game and the nature of the beast.”
Crosby is well aware he can’t play forever.
“I never wanna look back and say I wish I would’ve, or I should’ve, done this,” he said. “I’m all in, and I’ve been all in since day one, and everybody that’s with me on a daily basis knows my approach to this game. They could say I might be on edge. Sometimes I might be. But at the end of the day, they know my intentions. And when you have real relationships and you lead by action instead of words, when you go out there and show the guys, this is how we do it, this is how you work, and you prove it every day, that holds a lot more weight than words. Yeah, I love the game, man. This is my whole life.”
Crosby has been with the Raiders for the entirety of his career, and it’d be a shame if this decision led to his playing in a different uniform next season.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.