Add The California Post on Google Everything Maxx Crosby had been longing for sat right at his fingertips late in the fourth quarter on Sunday.
A game hanging in the balance. A bitter AFC West division rival trying to keep it alive. A chance to finish the job on the road, in the backyard of Kobe Bryant, one of Crosby’s heroes and the patron saint of moments like this.
For too much of Crosby’s Raiders career, that opportunity belonged to someone else. Another pass rusher. Another contender. Someone whose team had done enough over the previous three quarters to make his fourth-quarter greatness matter.
Crosby could supply the pressure. The effort. The relentless pursuit.
But there he was Sunday against the Chargers, with a victory waiting on the other side of Joe Alt and Justin Herbert beyond him.
Crosby went through the first to get to the second.
And in the desperate scramble to prevent the inevitable, Alt grabbed hold of Crosby and tried to drag him down. The holding penalty occurred in the end zone, producing a safety that slammed the door on the Chargers in a 26-14 Raiders win.
No one earned that moment more than Crosby, who nearly had to leave the Raiders to find the very opportunity they finally gave him Sunday.
“Every single day I come in and put everything into this, all year round,” Crosby said. “I want to be put in situations to close out the game and be that guy.”
His teammates never doubted what he would do with it. Many have watched Crosby give the Raiders everything he had, often with little to show for it. This time, their joy went beyond winning. It was about watching him finally get something back.
“For him to close it out, I know it means the world to him,” said Raiders wide receiver Tre Tucker. “I’m just super excited for him.”
Finally, there was something worth celebrating underneath them.
But amid the roar of a Raiders locker room celebrating a 2-0 start and a bitter rival’s 0-2 predicament, Crosby was already channeling his inner Mamba Mentality.
“There’s a lot of work to do,” Crosby said. “Lots to clean up.”
But Crosby, whose pursuit of meaningful football nearly carried him out of Las Vegas last March, suddenly has reason to believe he can find it wearing the only NFL uniform he has ever known or loved.
He almost had to leave his beloved Raiders to get the Raiders he always wanted.
A trade to the Ravens was supposed to give Crosby access to the kind of opportunities that had become agonizingly scarce with in Las Vegas. A chance to play for something beyond pride. To spend the final minutes of a game hunting a quarterback whose desperation reflected the scoreboard.
Then the Ravens rescinded the deal over concerns about his knee.
The awkwardness was unavoidable. So were the questions about what came next, and whether a relationship that had reached the point of separation could ever feel quite the same.
But Sunday offered a pretty compelling place to start.
Because if we are being honest about why Crosby wanted out in the first place, it was never difficult to understand.
He wanted his work to lead somewhere. Wanted the exhaustion to come with a payoff. Wanted the Raiders to meet him somewhere near the standard he had spent his career demanding of himself.
They were not talented enough. Not coached well enough. Not led well enough. Whatever the particular failure, the result kept putting Crosby in the same position: playing with the urgency of someone chasing a championship for a team struggling to find its way.
There is only so much comfort in being called the heartbeat of a franchise when the franchise keeps flatlining.
Crosby understands that part, too. Every season spent waiting for the Raiders to figure things out was another season taken from a prime that does not come with an extension simply because the organization wasted some of it.
That was the urgency behind March. Find a place where the stakes match the sacrifice. Find it while there is still time to make the most of it.
Which is what made Sunday’s finish resonate beyond the two points it put on the scoreboard.
An offense led by Kirk Cousins and a team directed by Klint Kubiak, a defense that now includes veteran playmakers like linebackers Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker, edge rusher Kwity Paye, and dynamic rookies like defensive backs Treydan Stukes and Zeke Masses, helped put Crosby in the position he had spent so long craving.
“There’s are a lot of guys that have had a lot of success in this league and know what winning it looks like,” said Crosby.
And therein lies the difference between asking your best player to rescue you every week and giving him the chance to finish what everyone else helped build.
The Raiders have spent plenty of time doing the former.
There was something appropriately forceful about how it happened. No elaborate explanation necessary. Just Crosby driving into Alt, collapsing the space between himself and Herbert until holding him became the tackle’s desperate response.
The penalty was the evidence of a matchup Crosby had won.
Somewhere in that sequence was the kind of moment that made Bryant such an enduring influence on Crosby. The preparation and obsession are supposed to bring you here, to a moment when the outcome is still available, and someone has to claim it.
Crosby has never lacked the appetite. He needed the opportunity.
Now comes the harder part for the Raiders: making this something he can reasonably expect again.
“Every single week there’s a new challenge and a new offense and a new scheme and things we know we got to improve on,” said Crosby. “So we’re sticking together and we’re playing together.”
A 2-0 start is encouraging. It is not proof that years of dysfunction have disappeared, or that every close game will end with Crosby spreading his wings.
But it gives him something more substantial than another promise.
He has felt it. His teammates have helped create it. And the Raiders have a finish they can try to repeat.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Crosby said. “But it’s awesome to see the guys respond.”
Back in March, Crosby thought he needed a different team to get here.
On Sunday, with Alt holding on and Herbert running out of room, his beloved Raiders finally gave him somewhere to go.
