Dear Eric DeCosta: I’ve called you and the Ravens sleazy for years, now the rest of NFL is catching up

Dear Eric:

Let’s be honest here for a couple of minutes. I know that’s hard for you and the Baltimore Ravens organization because you’re making enough money to be as dishonest as you’ve been for over a decade.

You can hide behind the word “physical” if you want. You can use the toady NFL language about “the process” and “our assessment of the situation” and act like this was all just sterile football prudence performed in a clean white room by your doctors and the serious men in Owings Mills with clipboards and video cut ups. 

But out here in the land of reality and consequences, where I still document your brazen dishonesty and the rest of the NFL media and your colleagues have gotten a very public sniff test since last Friday night, this Maxx Crosby fiasco looks less like prudence and more like poor form, bad faith and one of those greasy, purple front-office episodes that makes everyone involved feel like they need a shower.

The physical might be legal. The stench is the problem.

The Raiders didn’t mince words announcing your flipflop on the deal: “The Baltimore Ravens have backed out of our trade agreement for Maxx Crosby. We will have no further comment at this time.” 

But, everyone else has had plenty of comments and sharp (and warranted) criticism about your ethics and intent. While you said in that hastily arranged “press conference” – the bush league smell of your “family” Chad Steele had that one all set up with a 90-minute warning in afternoon rush hour for the cameras and what’s left of the reporters to all run to The Castle to see your bleeding heart be “gutted” – that the Ravens “were not able to complete the process.”

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For the people still naïve enough to believe your “I am gutted” fiction, I can always offer a whiff of the odiferous Owings Mills vintage Ray Rice and Justin Tucker coverups and lies none of you still acknowledge. 

You backed out and used the money to sign Trey Hendrickson. Fine. The Ravens had a right to protect themselves. Trades pending physicals are part of the league. Nobody is arguing the legality of it.

Like everyone else with a brain, I’m arguing the smell and your withering reputation of dishonesty.

Because you don’t get to spend a weekend letting Baltimore dream in purple smoke about Maxx Crosby sacking quarterbacks at The Bank, watching the city light up, watching your own organization bask in the heat of the bold move, and then, right when the bill comes, tell everybody this was just responsible medicine. You don’t get to be the guy who pops champagne on Friday and turns into Perry Mason by Tuesday because somebody in the building suddenly discovered that knee cartilage exists for a guy you knew was on crutches.

And that’s the part you should answer for, Eric, if you were an honest man. Not whether the Ravens could do it. Whether they handled it like a franchise that believes its word still means something.

Because the league noticed.

CBS, citing reporting around the NFL, quoted one general manager saying, “This is very much bullshit on Baltimore’s part.” An agent asked, “How can a team ever trust the Ravens again?” and a league source told CBS, “I don’t think many teams will feel comfortable trading with the Ravens.”

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Those aren’t fans from Dundalk yelling into the wind. Those are football people looking at your process and saying the quiet part out loud:

You and the Baltimore Ravens are shady, dishonest humans.

And Maxx Crosby noticed, too.

He came back swinging after flying across the country twice and spending a day with you and your people: “Everything happens for a reason. Believe nothing you heard [and] half of what you see. I’m a Raider. I’m back. Run that s—.” That is not exactly the social media post of a man who feels warmly embraced by the integrity of your operation. That sounds like a player who believes he got jerked around in public and then handed back to Las Vegas like an opened, damaged box from Amazon.

All at the finish line of the free agent and trading time – the tampering period, which portends the NFL mind crimes that you and your executive buddies have flaunted for 25 years, which begat the actual term and window to get your ethical shit together along with 31 other teams so no one is hopping fences at midnight and getting chased by dogs to sign the next Bart Scott.

Now, to be fair — and yes, even in a pile-on there should be one chair left for fairness — ESPN’s Bill Barnwell (who, by the way, sounded goofily naïve) argued that the “preponderance of the evidence” points toward the Ravens really being spooked by the medicals, not inventing an excuse out of thin air. He also noted how messy the timing was and how the Ravens may have hurt themselves in free agency while waiting on the deal. (I’m guessing his press pass is in good standing when Steele sees him.)

That’s the charitable case. That’s the best possible (and least plausible) defense of your operation. 

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But even that defense does not acquit you of looking bush league.

Because if you knew enough about Crosby’s January meniscus repair to trade two first-round picks for him in the first place, what exactly was the revelation? That football players in March are not assembled in mint condition like collectible action figures? That a pass rusher who plays a thousand snaps and drags his body through concrete every Sunday might have wear and tear? Crosby’s surgery and recovery timeline were not secret CIA documents hidden in an old Jon Gruden mayonnaise jar under Al Davis’ broken desk in Oakland. The league’s website even noted that there was already reporting in February that Crosby was not expected to be cleared by the start of the new league year, which makes the Ravens’ last-minute alarm look even stranger to outsiders. 

So here is where it gets ugly, Eric.

Either your front office did not do enough homework before agreeing to one of the biggest trades in franchise history – which would be gross incompetence for a supposedly elite operation – or you did know the broad outlines, got cold feet later, and used the medical process as your escape hatch to sign Trey Hendrickson and pocket the two draft picks. Maybe not a lie. Maybe not an invented report. But the kind of technical truth that leaves everyone else feeling played.

(Kind of like when you told me at Starbucks in Owings Mills back in 2022 that no one in the Baltimore Ravens organization was going to rescind my press credentials after 27 years because your building had more integrity than that?)

That’s why the word nefarious hangs in the air, even if nobody can prove some back-room conspiracy. 

Because in the NFL, bad faith never wears a ski mask. It always wears a blazer, says “we were not able to complete the process,” and expects everyone to nod respectfully while pretending the timing wasn’t awfully convenient.

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Convenient, by the way, because of the instant pivot into using the money to sign Hendrickson after the Crosby deal collapsed but before 4 p.m. on Wednesday. It’s not hard to lay out exactly why people around the league would wonder whether the Ravens simply got cold feet once another option crystallized, even while acknowledging nobody outside the building can know with certainty.

That uncertainty is your problem now. You own it. 

And you know what else you own? The reputation hit, especially after getting Hendrickson to say that he believed you were getting BOTH pass rushers and there’s no one with a salary cap calculator who can make that math add up. 

So, it’s easy to call “bullshit” on the fact that you were financially sourced to sign them both, even in the aftermath of the Lamar Jackson restructure, which has been ignored as an open invitation for your two-time MVP quarterback and his agent mother to bend you over and hold you up this time next year, whether you win the Super Bowl or not.

You can say you’re “gutted” all you want. That word is doing heavy lifting right now — like a Chad Steele PR intern carrying sandbags in a hurricane. “Gutted” does not restore trust with Vegas. “Gutted” does not help the next GM decide whether your handshake means anything between the combine and the fax machine and your lawyers and doctors. “Gutted” does not make Crosby less embarrassed or angry, and my guess is that you’re lucky the Raiders are not on the schedule in 2026.

Gutted is not an excuse for accountability; real answers are.

When did you first know Crosby’s medical file could become an issue?

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What specifically changed between the moment you were ready to send two first-round picks and the moment you weren’t? (Word is, you called the Raiders and tried to lessen the trade value, which is an ethical no-no.)

Did you attempt to renegotiate after seeing the physical because the risk was real, or because the price suddenly felt too rich?

How much of this was influenced by the opportunity to redirect resources elsewhere and Hendrickson’s availability?

And most of all: why should any team believe the Ravens negotiate in full good faith if your boldest deal of the decade can evaporate after the parade route already got mapped in everyone’s head? 

(Full disclosure: I was the idiot who called you a “Super Bowl favorite” at 7 a.m. last Saturday morning with the addition of Crosby. I’m certainly not calling you that with Hendrickson and the 14^th pick in the draft.”

This is Baltimore, Eric. We know what bad faith smells like. We’ve had owners sell us civic romance while counting parking revenue and moving the Colts. We’ve had coaches like your old, wealthy buddy John Harbaugh talk culture while choking in January. We’ve had executives preach stability while the product frayed right in front of us. We’ve dealt with the Orioles and Peter Angelos for most of our lifetime, here. So, spare us the antiseptic language. Spare us the front-office purple incense.

Maybe the physical truly failed. Maybe your doctors saw something they could not accept. 

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Maybe this was, in the narrowest legal sense, the correct football decision.

But leadership is not judged only by what you are allowed to do. It is judged by how your actions look, land and linger.

And this one landed like a cheap shot in the eyes of almost everyone with a brain.

It made the Ravens look slippery. It made you look overeager and then scared – like a teenager who offered the “I wanna go steady” ring and then wanted it back the next day. It made a respected player look disposable. And it made the rest of the league ask whether dealing with Eric DeCosta now comes with an asterisk and a lawyer.

That is the damage. Not the lost pass rush. Not the draft picks that stayed home. Not even the embarrassment of the headlines.

The damage is that a franchise that prides itself on competence suddenly looked cute, coy and conviently transactional in the worst possible way.

“Gutted.”

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Yeah, right. Sell that bullshit to the other 31 NFL general managers you have to deal with in the future.

You can survive a failed trade. What you don’t survive as easily is the suspicion that your word only lasts until you find a softer landing.

So, yes, Eric — pile on? Absolutely.

Because if everyone else around the NFL is doing it, maybe it’s because this wasn’t just a football decision.

Maybe it was a character test.

And in this one, the Ravens passed the physical and failed the smell test.

And that falls on you.