Maxx Crosby and Kirk Cousins’ training camp scuffle generated a lot of buzz, but the main focus is on competition, intensity, and maintaining the Las Vegas Raiders‘ concentration.
A shoving match between Cousins and Crosby on a padded Friday in training camp somehow produced a viral debate about who would win a real fistfight, complete with a former linebacker’s hot take that Cousins would “beat the tattoos off” his own pass rusher. It’s a fun sentence but it’s also just noise.
Let’s keep it real, folks: Crosby has better things to do than answer it.
Strip away the theater, and what’s left is ordinary training camp friction. Cousins, who has been running the first-team offense and is three weeks from his 38th birthday, took two hits to the arm during 11-on-11 work. The 15-year veteran reacted with the edge of a player who still has something to prove.
Crosby, three inches taller and 42 pounds heavier, absorbed a shove and grabbed a jersey, exchanged words, and walked to the sideline. Instantly, teammates separated them in seconds. Head coach Klint Kubiak’s read was the right one. It was two leaders competing hard, nothing that survives contact with a real game.
The more relevant story is the one Maxx Crosby has been telling on himself all camp…
He’s said plainly that he’s been warned about hitting the quarterback. His intensity once got him pulled from practice at Eastern Michigan, and he admits dialing it back “is not easy.” That’s not a confession of a problem. It’s a pass rusher who plays at one speed trying to adjust for a coaching staff that wants him protecting Cousins in December, not October.
Crosby returning to Las Vegas after Baltimore sent him back over a physical only raises the stakes. He doesn’t need a sideline skirmish defining his summer.
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Cousins doesn’t need much defending, either. After all, as Michael Mayer pointed out, having some edge as a quarterback isn’t a bad thing. At the same time, it only becomes a problem if it turns into a penalty or gets someone tossed from a game.
More importantly, nobody needed to win this one. Teammates stepped in, Kubiak let it go, and both players got back to work. In the end, the Raiders won’t care who would’ve won a parking-lot fight come Week 1. They’ll care whether Crosby’s motor and Cousins’ arm are working toward the same goal.
For now, everything else is just noise.
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