NFL Network’s Gerald McCoy: Don’t Sleep on the Raiders & Maxx Crosby This Season

Gerald McCoy knows exactly how this looks. He is doing it anyway.

Asked for his AFC sleeper, the NFL Network analyst went right back to the well he went to last time.

"I'll do it again. I'm doing it again," McCoy said. "Going with the Raiders."

The pushback was immediate, and McCoy did not bother pretending there was no bias in the pick. "Once a Raider, always a Raider," he said, before making the case that actually matters to him. It has nothing to do with the depth chart. It has to do with one man's mood.

"Maxx Crosby has a point to prove. He's a little pissed off," McCoy said. "Actually, he's a lot of pissed off. I was just with Maxx in Vegas. He has a point to prove. And Maxx is extremely upset and he's going to have these guys on a mission."

Pressed to name the grievance, McCoy laid out a sequence that would sour anybody. Crosby loves the Raiders. Crosby got traded anyway. Then the trade got taken back because the other side did not believe in his knee, and he landed right back where he started.

"It's almost like they're saying we don't really need you, but we need you," McCoy said. "And then other teams are saying, you just kind of lost a step, we don't really trust it."

So he is upset with the world. That was the summary offered back to him, and McCoy did not argue with it.

"Yes. Maxx is out to prove a point," he said. "I'm Maxx Crosby for a reason."

That is the whole thesis. A great player with a chip on his shoulder, playing for the franchise that briefly told him it could live without him, dragging a locker room along with him.

The quarterback plan is where McCoy gets less romantic and more practical. Plenty of people want the Raiders to throw Minshew out there and let him learn in the fire. McCoy does not see the point.

"For me, I just let Kirk Cousins rock," McCoy said. "If you don't have to throw out the kid, then you don't throw out the kid."

His reasoning is about scheme fit rather than upside. This offense comes from the McVay tree, and Cousins has run that kind of system before.

"I believe that Kirk can run it," McCoy said. "And collectively, I just believe that the Raiders can surprise some people."

He was also honest about how he got here. The sleeper category is thin this year, and most of the candidates on his board were not actually sleepers.

"Everybody else wasn't really like not really sleepers," McCoy said. "So I had to just kind of go deep in the bag and just pull somebody out of there."

There is a wrinkle in the logic that the desk caught right away. The team that just drafted first overall is not a team most people would file under sleeper. Then again, if the pick works and Cousins holds the fort and Crosby plays angry, that is exactly the profile of a team nobody sees coming.

Once a Raider, always a Raider. Ask again in January.