S.I.’s Albert Breer on Possibility the Raiders Trading Maxx Crosby (Again)

Rich wanted a clean answer. Does Maxx Crosby start the season in Las Vegas or not?

"Yeah, I think so," Albert Breer said.

That should have closed the file. It did not, because Breer immediately began describing the conditions under which it would reopen.

"There is a world where he gets traded," he said. The version he can picture involves Dallas coming over the top and matching what the Ravens paid, which is where the whole thing gets complicated. That Ravens pick was 14th overall.

The math problem is that good players get traded to good teams, and good teams do not pick 14th. If John Spytek and Klint Kubiak are running the numbers in Las Vegas, they have to account for the fact that a contender's first-rounder is probably landing somewhere in the low 20s. A worse pick for the same player is a harder deal to say yes to.

So Breer has a specific scenario in his head, and it requires the season to break a particular way.

"If the Raiders struggle early and Maxx is shot out of a cannon the first two months of the season, that's sort of where I think you start to get some of the interest picking up."

Two things have to happen at once. The team has to fall out of it, and the player has to remind everyone why he is worth a first-round pick. Neither alone moves the needle.

Rich brought up the other side of the equation, noting that Jerry used his opening press conference to announce he was talking to people and looking to add, with the Rams having potentially had Donald in the previous two weeks.

Breer's reporting on that press conference is the funniest detail of the segment.

"I talked to some people in the organization who were like, we had no idea Jerry was going to get up there and say that," he said.

Rich pointed out that as far as evergreen statements go, a Jerry press conference promising to add talent is close to the top of the list.

Speaking of evergreen, the conversation then collapsed entirely into an investigation of Breer's wardrobe, because the shirt he was wearing appeared to be the exact shirt he wears every time he sits in that chair. Rich asked him to cross his legs the other way for comparison purposes.

The forensic results came back mixed. Different shoes. Different socks, since one pair had red in it and the other was white polka dots. Different watch, which Breer regretted, because the current one he could not figure out how to silence. An older Instagram photo surfaced showing a different shirt entirely and a significantly more aggressive tan, from back when he was more formal.

The wedding ring, it was determined, is the same.