Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
Mike Florio talks Maxx Crosby saga, potential officiating work stoppage
25 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This hour is sponsored by Riverfront Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram.
Ladies and gentlemen, joining us now is a man who's got a massive brain.
Mike Florio.
He used to be a lawyer, then he decided to take his talents to the Internet.
NBC Sports. I'm sorry I'm late. I was talking to Robert Kraft. That isn't the time for an airing of grievances. Pro Football Talk. I got a lot of problems with you people. No, you're going to hear about it. On Chicago Sports Radio, 104.3 The Score. I want to keep talking Legos.
There is always NFL news. Always. There's always money in the banana stand. And for both concepts, we'd like to have Mike Florio on. He is the creator and the editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. He is at Pro Football Talk on X. And he not only joins us via our hotline, but also on Zoom. He is at twitch.tv slash thescorechicago. Mike, how are you today?
I'm doing great. How are you?
Good. We're just trying to digest the latest in the ever going saga that is the reporting surrounding the Max Crosby trade. That wasn't the latest from ESPN talking about how and I'm going to read this word for word in the article.
The Ravens' concern centered on the uncertainty of Crosby's durability after a couple of seasons in Baltimore because of a degenerative issue in his knee, a source told ESPN. What's the latest you've heard and how are you digesting the news?
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Chapter 2: What is the latest update on the Max Crosby trade saga?
If we ever have to lock out the officials again, we'll have a way to help the replacement officials to avoid another fail-merry outcome, which is what they're trying to do. Now, good luck at 1 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Central on a Sunday when nine games are happening, making sure that all of the mistakes are being cleaned up.
But in standalone games, where there's only one game in a primetime window, it makes it a lot easier to fix the kind of thing that could create a big mess for the NFL.
As you know, Mike, this is infuriating because referees should be full time anyway. It's not like we have crews that are known for their consistency. We talk all the time, all season long, about how rule interpretations of judgment calls are wide, vast, and inconsistent.
And the NFL has been on the wrong side of this for a very long time, where there's more money than ever rotating around the existence of their games. And there are now other parties involved besides just teams that have financial interest in these outcomes. And while I don't think that necessarily kowtowing to that is part of the concept here, I do think it acknowledges
The need for consistency in many calls that end up deciding one score games. This not only seems like kicking the can down the road, it's avoidant of one of the most obvious issues that needs to happen in professional sports.
Well, and you're hitting the nail right on the head. At a time when they should be taking multiple steps forward, they're going to take one giant leap backward by entrusting the most important function on game day to a bunch of low-level college and high school officials.
They don't get the higher-level college officials because those folks who aspire to become NFL officials will be branded as scabs, and that creates morale issues down the road as those people make their way into the NFL.
But when you consider the fail-merry play from that Packers-Seahawks Monday night game, Week 3, 2012, that broke the lockout, that got the NFL to finally bend enough to solve this problem, think of what the reaction to that game would be today.
in an age of hey everybody pick up your phone and make a bet it would be what happened in 2012 times a thousand and i don't get the impression that they're nearly as concerned about making the officiating better at a time when it needs to be better.
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Chapter 3: How did the Ravens evaluate Max Crosby's injury concerns?
They're amateurs now. Like, that's the issue. A lot of these people, as we know, have other jobs and they've got other obligations. And famously, it used to be a hobby to check and see whose day job it was on which refereeing crew. These guys should be professionals full-time. I don't care that it's just 17 regular season games. They're important.
They should spend their time preparing for those games. The NFL has enough money to be able to make this happen. Slap another game on Netflix and call it a day.
People don't understand how it would look if officials were full-time.
They do their jobs. That's how it would look.
Right, exactly. you have access to them all year long. You can come up with AI programs, virtual reality programs that they can get reps. Someone told me not that long ago from the league that by the end of the season, the mistakes become less glaring because they've been doing it week after week after week.
So if you find a way to keep that saw as sharp as it can be in the off season, you don't have that. And there are ways. Virtual reality would be an awesome way to get the officials to see all the different possible crazy things that could happen so they're ready for anything.
And during the season, instead of them flying home to practice law or be school teachers or run a plumbing supply company like Gene Steratore did and probably still does about 70 miles up the road from me here in Washington, PA, you get them all together in a central location. They all live in Dallas. They all live in Kansas City. They fly in.
They spend one or two full days going over everything that happened the weekend before it. and getting everyone on the same page so there's continuity and consistency in these calls. It's not difficult. Here's the problem, though. It's not just we have to give them more money. You have to offer these folks enough that you'll buy out their full-time jobs that have a far less clear
method of accountability than being an NFL official does. If you're going to go all eggs in the NFL official basket, it's going to take enough money to get you to give up your other job, a job that you're far less likely to be fired from.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Crosby's potential contract length?
That rule, by the way, for one year only, allowed the NFL officiating department to correct clear and obvious misses by on-field officials that impact the game in the event of a work stoppage involving the game official's represented by the NFL Referees Association. But there's some other ones. I'm curious as to what really caught your attention, Mike, out of these proposals.
Well, one thing that caught my attention is there's no proposal regarding the tush push. And everyone's hair was on fire last year. The tush push must go. It's unsafe. It's not football. And it came within two votes of being scrapped forever. Two votes. Well, it would have been scrapped until there would be at least 24 teams that would want to bring it back.
And now, it's not even on the radar screen. Rich McKay, the chair of the Competition Committee, was asked about that within the last hour. He pointed out this wasn't a Competition Committee proposal. Nothing comes out of the Competition Committee unless it's unanimous. So we've seen in recent years a proliferation of the NFL sidling up to a team to nudge a team to make a proposal.
That's exactly what the league did last year with the Packers to get the tush-push proposal on the table. And for all of the fake urgency that was being propagated last year, it's just gone now. Why is it gone? Because the Eagles didn't win the Super Bowl. It's that simple. They're no longer jealous of the Eagles because it's not as effective.
It's not delivering a championship like it did a year ago. It just really peels back the BS from last year as to what last year was really all about. Because I guarantee you, If the Eagles had won another Super Bowl, someone would have proposed it again.
Just like, just like, if the Raiders are ever contenders, someone's going to say, this can't continue with Tom Brady calling games for Fox and being a minority owner of the Raiders. As long as the Raiders are bad, nobody cares. The moment the Raiders are good, it's going to become a huge problem.
Well, I think it also had a lot to do with the Bears successfully stopping it on national television. Nashawn Wright was pointing out that quarterbacks essentially take a playoff. So you involve them and then you get the turnover. And suddenly this isn't as much of a problem to the rest of the league. They figured out how to defend it.
And, you know, the other theory is that the effort by the commanders in the NFC championship game a year ago, which involved them going offside multiple times to the point where referee Sean Hockley had to threaten them with invoking the palpably unfair act rule, which has never been used in the history of the league to award the Eagles a touchdown if they did it again.
you know, do this one more time and I'm going to turn this car around and drive home, basically. I think that display got the commissioner's attention and caused him to say, we've got to get rid of this. And I think that was beyond anything else, jealousy of the Eagles, whatever. I think the jealousy of the Eagles fueled it. I think the moment where it started was that game.
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Chapter 5: What challenges are the NFL referees currently facing?
Is it something that needs to be looked at? It's like, where's this coming from? Nobody even asked you about the salary cap. That was his signal that the owners are looking at this 50-50 split, I believe, and realizing as the numbers keep going up and up, the salary caps mushroomed from 182.5 million per team in 2021 to 301.2 million today. A 50-50 revenue share eventually gets to a point where
management says why are we doing this and i think we're at that point and i think that becomes part of the leverage to get the players to agree to 18 regular season games and 16 international games that gets discussed by folks like robert kraft the patriots owner as a given and i think that sooner than later the nfl is going to reach out to the union now that it has a new executive director in jc treanor and the nfl is going to say here's our offer
Take it now or it's going to get worse. If we have to lock you out in 2031, it's going to be a lot worse than it is right now. This is our offer for 18 games starting in 2027. I firmly believe they're holding out hope to start it in 2027. And the clearest evidence of that, the Super Bowl to be played in Atlanta in February of 2028, Super Bowl 62, does not have a specific date.
Now, think of everything that you have to put in place for a Super Bowl to happen. You've got to have a convention center for the week. You've got to have thousands of hotel rooms reserved. We are 22 months away from Super Bowl 62, and they still don't have a date for it.
They're leaving that window open in the hopes that they can convince the union to take this offer that I think is coming soon to go to 18 games, not this season, but next season.
That is a detail. Mike Florio, always chock full of news and information.
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Chapter 6: How could replacement referees impact NFL games?
We appreciate your work every day.
Thanks, Mike. Enjoy your lunch. All right. See you.
That is Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk on X. He is ProFootballTalk.com. I didn't realize that it didn't have a set date. How infuriating for people who are supposed to organize stuff.
Yeah, it's still far enough that they can get around that. It's not as urgent, but it's a pretty big deal because usually, as you know, several years out, we know when the Super Bowl is being played. So this tells you, yes, 18-game season next year. It's a real possibility.
Seems like there's some money to be made there somehow.
Always, always a paper trail. And the paper's always green with little insignias and numbers on it.
Well, and they just get to do the, we're the NFL. Which is why, just pay your referees, because you're the NFL.
Hey, Layla, big bank still takes a little bank.
Every day, which is why, like, there's, they're like, oh, we can't solve this. Yes, you absolutely could have. You absolutely could have. You just don't want to pay for it because that would be finding a solution. Coming up next here on Rahimi Harrison Grody, you know what it's time for?
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