Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
Mike Florio talks Maxx Crosby's future, latest NFL headlines (Hour 2)
12 Feb 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.
Mike Florio is always working. It doesn't matter if the NFL's in season or not. I think that the week after the Super Bowl is still somewhat the case. Doesn't matter, though. Mike's always working for you. He is the creator, editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. He's at Pro Football Talk on X. And he joins us on the Circa Illinois hotline. Download the Circa Sports app today.
He also is on Twitch, twitch.tv slash thescorechicago. Mike, how are you?
Doing great. How's everybody today?
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Chapter 2: What is the latest news on Maxx Crosby's potential trade?
It's a one plus. A one plus what? That remains to be seen, and a lot of that's going to be driven by what kind of a competition emerges for Max Crosby's services. But he plays the second most important position in football at the pro level. Quarterback and guy who disrupts the quarterback, those are the two most important positions. So could they get two first-round picks?
There's a chance they could. Now, one wrinkle is, hey, he's got a contract through 2029 at favorable numbers, but... Usually when you see a high-profile player like that get traded, he walks through the door with an expectation that there's going to be some sort of a sweetener. So it isn't enough to just say, wow, the contract's really favorable.
We're not paying him $47 million a year like the Packers are paying Micah Parsons. You're probably going to have to give him some money up front. You're probably going to have to give him a raise relative to the market. But even then... The guy is incredible. He works harder than anyone. He's got a will to win.
He's told us stories at the Super Bowl how other players on the team will say, I want to be like you. How can I be like you? And he'll say, all right, show up at the gym tomorrow at 5 a.m. And they come for a day or two and then they stop. So he makes that commitment to be great.
And when you have a guy like that in the locker room, ideally with guys who are going to be influenced by that, it's going to make your team even better.
Well, and to be fair, Mike, I will say this. I think Bears fans drooling over the availability of Max Crosby comes from how they got Khalil Mack into coaching change in Las Vegas. And lo and behold, Khalil Mack comes to the Bears and it worked out very well.
Mack wanted nothing to do with John Gruden. That was well documented. And as that season unfolded and the Raiders thought maybe they could prevail upon Khalil Mack to stick around. He was in his fifth year option at the time. He held out, held out, held out. And then that deal got done. So, yeah, I think it's smarter if you're the Raiders to recognize if Crosby really is done.
that he means it and your best play is to maximize the trade possibilities and do the deal. This assumes the Raiders are going to realize that they need to do it. It's hard for the rational mind to predict the behaviors of the irrational. And all due respect to the current power structure there, the owner is still the owner. Mark Davis is still making these calls.
And there hasn't been a whole lot that he's done by way of decisions over the past 15 years that would objectively be called rational.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Crosby's knee injury on trade discussions?
Matt Ryan is the primary football executive in Atlanta. Ian Cunningham's hire as GM doesn't qualify for the compensatory draft pick. So I followed up and I asked, well, why is it different from 2022 when Terry Fontenot was hired from the Saints to be the GM? Rich McKay was the president and CEO of football. Why didn't... the two compensatory draft picks not get given to the Saints.
And the league's response is basically then, Terry Fontenot was becoming the primary football executive. Now, Matt Ryan's the primary football executive. That's the explanation. Does it mesh with this idea that Matt Ryan is saying, hey, Cunningham's in charge. As one GM explained to me, this is a great safe harbor for Matt Ryan where he can have his cake and eat it too.
If things go sideways, I didn't do it. Ian Cunningham was in charge of free agency in the draft. And you know what? Wouldn't be the first time that a high level executive with an NFL team was in position to take the credit when things go well. And then when things don't go well, that wasn't me. That was that guy.
Yeah, it's been a point of consternation here in Chicago, as you can imagine, and really just trying to set the record straight for future opportunities, whether it be the compensatory picks for a head coaching job or anything else. Mike, I'm curious, when you look at what's going on with the salary cap going up,
And now teams trying to sort things out, whether that's waiving players, whether that is restructuring contracts. How difficult of a process is that for teams each and every year to go through what the Bears and everybody else is going through right now?
I think it gets overblown. It's very easy to create cap space by restructuring contracts. Most contracts now, second contracts, third contracts, big money deals, they have a provision in there that gives the team the automatic right to restructure. And it's simply, and I'll keep the numbers as basic as I can, just so I don't short circuit my own brain.
If somebody's due to make $30 million this year in salary, You take that $30 million, you reduce the salary down to the minimum for that player's years of experience, and the rest of it gets treated as a signing bonus, and the money gets spread over five years. And so 80% of those cap dollars get pushed out to future years. That's the easy way to do it. Every year, oh, what was this team?
What was that team? Oh, they're never going to figure it out. And they always figure it out. The Saints are the best example. Every year, how are they ever going to get out of this cap mess? And they get out of it. And the thing that helps teams is the cap keeps going up and up and up.
So if you can take current cap dollars and shove them into future years when the cap is higher, the relative impact of that cap dollar is lesser. That dollar I would take this year means less in a future year because the cap keeps going up and up. So that's the key. If we ever get to the point where the cap starts going down, kicking the can becomes a problem.
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Chapter 4: What would it cost to acquire Maxx Crosby from the Raiders?
I mean, he's a former quarterback. He tries to get a sense for for just how they look that day. And he said he just he sensed that May was never really going through the full drops. He wasn't really slinging at it. He was more deliberate. He was more careful. Yeah. And maybe because he couldn't really feel his arm. How do you throw a football accurately?
How do you get the right touch, the right velocity, the right force on it if part of the apparatus is numb and you can't communicate from your shoulder to your brain and back again what's really going on in there? So... You know, this should be a bigger deal. I saw that Nick Wright had some things to say about it. It really is amazing in this age of legalized gambling, we don't demand more.
And we just are content to have so much inside information that can be acted upon, that deceives the public on what someone's true health really is. But I think at the end of the day, people who had known, if you knew that May was going to need a tort all shot to play on Sunday, Seahawks giving four and a half suddenly looks a lot better.
Yeah, it does. That is absolutely true. Mike Florio, thanks as always for joining us.
Thanks, Mike. Have a great week.
That is Mike Florio, the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk, joining us here on Rahimi Harrison-Grody on 104.3 The Score. We're going to stay with football because Kevin Fishbane did a deep dive, our friend, the writer for The Athletic, on the Bears, dare I say, because you just said it, the cat purgatory that may result...
It's temporary. It's purgatory. That means you get out one way or the other.
But here's the problem. You don't want to have to do it with the Bears' most productive linebacker this season.
So we'll discuss that next. Flacco on first down over the middle. It's intercepted. Off the deflection, it's Tremaine Edmonds. Edmonds on the move. Flacco trying to make the stop. He can't do it, and Edmonds is in with a pick six. He had his third interception of the year last week. His fourth puts six on the board and gives the Bears the lead.
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Chapter 5: How does Crosby's contract impact his trade value?
We're not going to move up to draft and all the off-ball linebackers are dead.
Yeah, but to see him actually come through and look like the guy for the 13, I know he missed four games, but for the 13 games to look like the guy that you thought that they were acquiring, that was good news for the Bears and a stabilizing force, remember, on a Bears team that had a secondary and serious flux.
And not just a secondary in serious flux. There's a reason we're calling him one of the most productive Bears and the most productive linebacker for sure. TJ Edwards was plagued by injury this year. Unfortunately, the most scary looking one happened during the playoffs, as we saw, with a broken leg. Noah Sewell ended up going out for the rest of the year with the Achilles.
There were so many bad injuries that the linebackers suffered as well. And for Tremaine Edmonds to step up and also have the season that, again, I think that's why the Bears wanted him. You know, he flourished and he didn't say much when it came to why he wasn't producing before. But alluded, I think, in very subtle ways to being put in a better position to succeed this time around.
And Kevin Fishbane, our friend from The Athletic, did a story on the Bears' tough spot that they're in under the salary cap. I know it's more flexible now, and I know it's going north of $300 million, which is a great thing for everyone. But the Bears still have so much money committed to players that there are very likely some cap casualties that are going to have to occur.
Edmonds is possibly one of them. According to Over the Cap, the Bears rank 24th in available cap space and are $5 million currently in the red. So there are going to have to be some tough decisions that are made. Edmonds making $17.44 million in the cap hit just this last season. And it makes you wonder what's going to happen.
It's the fact that you look at where he is compared to other linebackers at his specific position. He's the fourth highest paid one. And so you have to weigh what you got out of Tremaine Edmonds this season. against the value of what you're paying compared to what other teams are paying that same position.
I know the salaries are going to go up, as you mentioned, because of the salary cap, but you still have to look at what are our priorities as an organization position-wise, because we know what's going on with the secondary, specifically the safety position, and where can we... Shave some money off.
And I'm sorry, but he's the most obvious candidate just because of where we are in his contract, the timing, and the structure of the contract.
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