Raiders’ trade deadline dilemma gets complicated by two stars who want to stay

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SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Maxx Crosby needed all of a few seconds Sunday to explain where he expects to be when the NFL trade deadline passes on Tuesday. 

He plays for the Raiders. He loves playing for the Raiders. As far as he’s concerned, he has a whole lot of football left to play for the Raiders.

“I plan on being here for a very long time,” Crosby said.

Kirk Cousins would be happy to report for work in Las Vegas on Wednesday, too. He was also willing to acknowledge something about the next two days that applies just as much to Crosby as it does to him. 

Somebody else gets to make that call.

“It feels a little bit out of my hands, so, I’ll just let decision makers make decisions and react accordingly,” Cousins said.

There you have it. Two veterans who want to stay, one general manager who has to consider what either might bring back in a trade and a head coach who came away from Sunday’s game against the 49ers with one more piece of evidence about where his team stands.

As Klint Kubiak put it, “Every day the calculus changes.”

Consider how much it has changed already. The Raiders were 3-0 with Cousins at quarterback. Four straight losses followed. A win over the Jets got them back to .500 and gave Kubiak good reason to see what this group could do against San Francisco. Now they’re 4-5, with the Seahawks and Broncos coming up, and the one thing general manager John Spytek can’t do is wait for those results before deciding how to handle Tuesday.

Cousins has re-established himself as a bona fide NFL starter after spending two seasons in Atlanta still trying to come back from an Achilles tendon injury.  

There is a market for that caliber of quarterback, with contenders like the Vikings and Eagles needing to improve their shaky quarterback situations.

And with the Raiders eventually needing to move on to prized rookie Fernando Mendoza, opening the door for him could be accomplished by moving Cousins, who has always been seen as a veteran bridge to the future face of the Raiders franchise, to a contender.

Decision, decisisions.

The more interesting question with Crosby is what, exactly, another team could offer that would make the Raiders better off without him.

For all the attention paid to what Crosby might do for a contender, somebody ought to consider what his departure would do to the team he’d leave behind. Kubiak and defensive coordinator Rob Leonard would go into the offseason needing to find somebody who can get to the quarterback even when everybody in the stadium knows he’s the guy the offense has to account for. They already employ one of those. And he wants to be here.

That won’t stop the trade talk, especially for a player who wanted out and was eventually dealt last March. Only for the Ravens, who traded two first-round picks to the Raiders for Crosby, to back out over concerns about Crosby’s knee.

Even though Crosby keeps expressing his recommitment to the Raiders, the speculation won’t go away.

“It comes with being a player of my stature,” Crosby said.

Nevertheless, he wants to stay.

That ought to set a pretty high bar for anybody calling about Crosby. Spytek can listen. He can even invite the team on the other end of the line to improve its offer. There’s a considerable distance between doing that and deciding a draft pick looks more appealing than the player the Raiders would spend it trying to replace.

With Cousins, the Raiders already know who comes next. They used the first overall pick on Fernando Mendoza. What they have yet to determine is when he gets the keys, and a call from a team in need of a veteran quarterback could force them to answer that question sooner than they intended.

“Love it here, love the guys here and feel good about what we have here,” Cousins said.

There’s value in that, too. Those guys still have a playoff spot to chase, however steep the climb looks after Sunday. Try telling a locker room that spent the better part of a month fighting to get back to .500 that the season effectively ended the first time they slipped below it again. Kubiak owes those players a chance to win in Seattle, and he clearly believes Cousins gives them one.

What Spytek owes the organization is a little different. If a club offers something of consequence for Cousins, he has to weigh the value of keeping his veteran for the stretch run against what the Raiders could get in return and what Mendoza could learn by playing those games himself. Sunday gave him plenty to consider on that front.

The deadline puts a clock on only part of that decision. The Raiders can keep Cousins on Tuesday and turn to Mendoza a week or a month from now. What they give up by waiting is the chance to get something back for a quarterback whose successor is already in the building.

Crosby sees years ahead of him in Las Vegas. Cousins would like another week. By Tuesday, both will know what Spytek has in mind.