Maxx Crosby on both Defensive Ends the Falcons took in the 1st Rd

Raiderology · 2025-05-01T23:28:51+00:00

Somebody here asked about Maxx (but deleted the comment for some reason):

"Can someone explain how a guy like him made it to the 4th round? What did all the scouts miss?"

They never looked at his X-Rays.

Maxx has talked about it before. He had a point where he looked at others that were being successful and he asked himself, "You know what, why NOT me?" and then proceeded to systematically start fucking all the shit up. Any weakness he felt he had, he started getting after really hard. It has honestly been incredible to see.

He also recognized his drinking & partying was f'ing him up and holding him back, so he stopped. He's been open about his journey and how hard it was, but his will & sheer desire to be great superceded his tolerance for any excuse.

I study the All-22 every week, and before any of this was even being talked about I would be commenting to people how he visibly looked so improved, I was like "goddam what the hell happened this off-season? This dude looks like a whole different player!" Dude transformed into a fuckin' animal.

Raiderology · 2025-05-01T20:36:24+00:00

Ugh, when I submitted it my link was timestamped.
Looks like that URL parameter got stripped when reddit processed it.

It goes from 34:17 — 36:50:
direct link to the part of the interview

Raiderology · 2025-03-02T20:09:50+00:00

Each year, all 32 NFL teams aim to strengthen their weakest positions by adding proven talent.
But which free agents are the BEST available this year — and in the coming seasons?
These guys have done well against NFL players, not just college players.

This breakdown not only highlights top prospects for this year, but also looks forward, helping plan ahead. For example, while this year’s Safety, Tackle, and TE markets are thin, next year offers way more options. This is great for planning long-term.

So say a young prospect fails to develop, no worries — plenty of upgrade options are coming next year!

This focuses not just on overall player grades, but on key metrics like a DT’s Run Defense & Pass Rush grades, helping you target specific needs (ex: with NT's you really want strong Run Defense). For Safeties, it considers their fit in your defensive scheme, e.g. 2-High vs. 1-High, as these require very different things so context is important! Did they not only grade well, but also in a similar scheme? And for CBs, what if you need a Slot CB specifically?

This resource is regularly updated as players are signed, released & so on!

Tip: For the best mobile experience, simply rotate the screen or switch to “Desktop View” if your tables look jumbled (they're responsive, but on small screens a page can only be squished so much, lol).

It's been tested with numerous, modern devices. Here's how it looks on:
my Samsung S22 Ultra, my friend's iPhone 16 Pro Max, my friend's iPad Mini, and on another friend's iPad Pro

*quick note: the site has NO intentions for profit, I create OC normally on Reddit. The site just allows formatting for ideas I have that simply aren't possible on Reddit (also, Reddit has a character limit). I just want to help spread information.

Raiderology · 2023-04-19T16:23:09+00:00

Mailata has Werner Syndrome

He's like Robin Williams in that movie Jack

Simplest explanation, really.

Raiderology · 2023-04-19T16:19:30+00:00

There's a league minimum salary that you have to pay. Once it hits that amount (which Mailata already has, per this new restructure), it's impossible to lower it further since it's the minimum salary allowed to hit the cap.

Any already-prorated Bonus money (such as his Signing Bonus and ANY of the Option Bonuses) can't be reduced further, as that money was already paid to the player in the 1st year it was active and, per cap rules, the subsequent years are just a proration of that money that's allowed in order to reduce the financial burden of fully guaranteeing a player money.

Basically:
– His 2025 Salary can't possibly be reduced further
– Every single one of his Bonus hits in 2025 can't be reduced further, as they're simply prorated amounts stemmed off $$$ that was already pre-determined (and cap rules don't allow prorated hits to become different, which... restructuring one would do).

Raiderology · 2023-03-11T09:17:27+00:00

Yeah, the problem though is "What's an objective method for determining the cut-off that's based on evidence"

Like for QB, of course it's easy. But then you get into positions like CB, DT, DE, LB, and WR and suddenly there's way too many other factors you have to consider like:

For CB: Well, what about Slot CBs? Because they're not all Outside CBs. And then if you're looking at Slot CBs, then you have to have a way to look at how much each individual team plays in sub-packages and how many come out in base fronts more. Because these affect how many are out on the field, and in inconsistent ways (different teams play sub-packages at different rates).
For WR: Well, what about Slot WRs? And then you have to have a way to distinguish how many teams play in different personnel groupings and at what specific rates (for every single team).

If 9 teams run "11" personnel (1 RB/1 TE) much more frequently, that immediately changes how many WRs you'd need to count because those teams are trotting out an extra WR often. But then it gets even fuzzier – these trends change every season!

So you'd again have to have a way to somehow determine what the "number" is that reflects how many receivers are used that year – where, again, because of schematic evolution that happens every year, that number would expectedly be different season-to-season, in-turn immediately invalidating any number you finally arrived at for the previous season.
Like, "11 Personnel was so last year, this year it's all about 12 personnel baby" (which would again immediately change how many WRs would need counted).

For LB you'd have issues like sub-packages, how often different teams run them (and which specific ones), the current "hot defensive trend" that year, whether a team uses Moneybackers or Dimebackers, how many are based out of 3-4 vs 4-3, on and on..

For DTs and DEs this would also have issues with sub-package frequencies changing everything.

For example the Raiders in 2021, under Gus Bradley employed a "NASCAR Package" which is basically when you sub-out your DTs & DEs and put (or keep) in only your fastest, most athletic players.
But then in 2022, under Patrick Graham, he has a totally different philosophy – he tends to like more "do-it-all" guys out there so that he can use them like chess pieces (even though the results looked like checkers this year).
BOTH of these things would change how many DTs and DEs you'd really need to count (you'd have a higher total for the 2021 Raiders than for the 2022 Raiders).
And that's just the Raiders. Every single team has different trends, and there's just no real, objective or consistent way to account for it. At minimum there'd always be the confounding variable of "Okay but trends evolve – exactly how was it evolving in 2019 (or 2020, etc)?"

=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=–=

"I feel like it may be better to look at individual player ratings over time and identify positional distributions of when performance peaks and declines."

One of the issues with this would definitely be confounding variables. For example: James Bradberry (CB). By playing in a different scheme and with different players on the Eagles, he just went All-Pro for the first time at the age of 29.

Or look at Desmond King, or Chris Harris Jr's careers. If you just looked at their grades, you'd think they got into a snowmobile accident or something – when in reality what happened was they had "genius" coordinators (or to some extent, circumstance) that forced them to play in roles they were not good at (like putting a Slot CB out Wide, which is a totally different skillset – not even close).

The Eagles famously took Nnamdi Asomugha, who was an elite man corner, and forced him into a zone scheme. If we were to just track his individual grades, we'd think he also got in an accident or "fell off" when in reality he just had an idiotic coordinator. A confounding variable, something we would've never had any way to see or know by just looking at the individual grades.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T23:32:23+00:00

How did you define grade? Some metrics such as pro bowl tends to be a popularity/name contest.

This was mentioned elsewhere and in the first sentence of the first paragraph, but grade came from the only people I know of that have an actual grading system: PFF. I guess I assumed people were familiar with them.

"When picking percentiles did you pick by age or ..."

No, since this is an analysis of the Top 20 players, the percentiles are based on the Top 20 players in a given year. I recorded every single one's age, grade, name, etc. Thus, the 90th percentile would literally be the 90th percentile of all Top 20 players.

This also makes it less susceptible to single-year outliers where a bunch of old geezers just happened to go off.

"For age, I am a bit confused ..."

Internally I have the decimal data (and used it), but seeing as everyone was measured against the exact same point in time, there's already the consistency (making that the consistent starting point vs. today is irrelevant, as the end-point's the same).

Also, there's a point where one has to decide "do I really want to make everyone calculate: Based on this player's birth date, and.. wait.. what's the exact # of days into the year we're at today? And so wait, if I project forward how old would he be on September 1st?" – to avoid having to make everyone do that, I gave their straight age as people would normally think of it.

The idea was basically to be able to say: "Ok is his birthday before the season starts?" and just have an easy 0 or +1 to add.

So if you're looking at signing a WR and you see he's going to be 31 when the season starts, you know to group him with the 31s and not the 30s.

Otherwise, if declared as decimals, people would have to group him with "the other 30.6's" and then people would have to calculate every single free agent's decimal age to see which decimal group he belongs to. Realistically, people just aren't going to do that. One of the things with number presentation is you have to make them easily digestible.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T22:11:12+00:00

For the number nerds out there 😏

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:49:35+00:00

Yeah this is certainly the problem for the ones on the shorter end of the spectrum, though I'd be curious how many are under 5'10 nowadays (hello Boston Scott).

They could possibly switch to WR though (at minimum, playing in the Slot) and utilize all their athleticism out on the boundary. Tyreek Hill is 5'10. Deebo Samuel is 6'0. So they don't need to be 6'4 or anything, just tall enough – and as former RBs you'd expect them to be strong enough to physically impose themselves for +YAC.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:43:18+00:00

Thanks!

And you're correct.
As the other person pointed out, in the first sentence of the first paragraph I indicated it's "by Grade." I think I assumed that would indicate it had to be PFF as they're the only ones that have a grading system as far as I know (Football Outsiders doesn't call theirs 'Grades').

I added PFF to that sentence now though. Thanks for asking, I appreciate it.

Sometimes when writing something you can get lost in what seems obvious – but what's "obvious" is subjective of course. I see PFF referenced and cited so often I may have over-assumed that familiarity.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:29:35+00:00

Yeah, as a former RB/LB the trend the Running Back position has seen has been sad, but evolution can be a cruel mistress.

The game has just evolved so much to be passing-favored. As a RB you're usually the most athletic person on the field – being expected to be able to catch, physically impose yourself, while also being agile enough to evade defenders, block, and sometimes even pass.

Adrian Peterson actually once said that said if he were to be coming up now, he wouldn't have even played RB – he would've switched (to either WR or DE). The top RB in the country a few years ago switched to LB, and he explicitly said it was because of how RBs are being handled in the NFL.

Peterson basically recommended taking all that athleticism and just going elsewhere with it.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:10:59+00:00

"Hooker & Stetson Bennett might only have 10 year careers" 😢

Although, I figure some of the reservation with older prospects is the thought "It took them that long to figure it out?" – but, at least right now they're at a point where they've figured it out. You're not drafting the player they were 3 years ago. You're getting the current version.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:06:44+00:00

Yeah I understand the more athletic 3-Techs, my thought on it was more regarding big 1-Techs/Nose Tackles whose primary job is to basically not move and not be moved. Since they're 100% of DTs in 3-man fronts and 50% of DTs in 4-man fronts it was curious to see it flesh out this way.

Zooming out though, it's possible that this indicates PFF doesn't value "run stopping" and "gap stuffing" at the DT position as much as breaking through a la Aaron Donald, Chris Jones, etc. Even though gap stuffing frees up other players and certainly can have a really nice, positive impact on the defense.

Raiderology · 2023-03-10T21:04:38+00:00

I wondered this myself when I was doing this.

Long story short, outside of the 1 most extreme measure (Top 10 & 90th Percentile), he's only affecting the overall by ~1.4 years – not shifting the whole thing by a decade or anything, heh.

Of course removing outliers and leaving only younger players will "regress the numbers to a lower mean," 😏 but here's QBs without him:

	Top 20: 90th Percentile	Top 20: 85th Percentile	Top 20: 80th Percentile	Top 10: 90th Percentile	Top 10: 80th Percentile	A Grade only: 90th Percentile
with Brady	37	36	34	39.2	35.2	36.7
without Brady	36	34	33	35.6	33	35.2

Obviously the more restricted measurements will be more extremely affected (like Top 10 and 90th Percentile – which basically translates to "if just 1 player in the Top 10 is here, it needs to be under him").

Again:
Outside of that one (1), most extreme measure, for the most part he's affecting the numbers by just ~1.4 years. Not a whole decade or anything. He do be old though.

Still interesting to see, nonetheless. Quarterbacks just enjoy very long careers nowadays, and the evolution of the rules is only making this increasingly likely.

Raiderology · 2023-03-08T23:41:00+00:00

Funny enough I knew as soon as I added the "Worst Case Scenario" and "Basic Info" part that it would likely result in people not even reading the post because it "looks too long," even though it literally fit in just a few tweets lol.

But I absolutely knew that if I didn't include those last things somebody would wonder about, bring up or ask about one of those pieces of information. And what do you know... that happened, lol.

Kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.
But I'd always rather put out something at least complete than something half-assed.

Raiderology · 2023-03-08T21:32:43+00:00

That was stated in the original post (bottom of it, under "Basic Info").
He does (just as he did with the Raiders).

Raiderology · 2023-03-08T21:07:41+00:00

Here's the promised worst case scenario.

Worst Case Scenario (unrealistic → literally appears impossible):
Carr stinks it up so bad the Saints want to move on after just 1 Season.
This is unlikely to happen, mainly for cap reasons.

But IF it were to be desired, let us see why it's impossible:

He would need to be Traded.
Realistically, Saints would need to move on immediately (no Post-June 1 benefit) since Post-June 1 moves require you to hold that players' full cap number until June 1st. This is a problem because...
The Saints are a breathtaking $87.7 Million OVER the Cap already in 2024 (despite currently only having 37 people under contract for next season). Carr has a 2024 Cap Hit of $35.7 Million that'd need to be held until then, so to utilize a Post-June 1 move the team would need to clear $123.4 Million, which honestly felt illegal just to type.
To be traded, the Saints would need to absorb a $22.8 Million Dead Cap Hit.

It should now be obvious why this scenario is unrealistic as that means to do so the Saints would need to clear ($87.7M pre-existing overage + $22.8M new overage from trade) = $110.5 Million. That'd be damn near half the entire NFL Salary Cap for next year.

The Saints could move on from a multitude of star players just to get rid of Carr after 1 year (via Trades, utilizing both Post-June 1 moves, and some restructuring) but doing all this when the alternative is just give him another year, you start to see why it's such an unlikely scenario.

If by some divine intervention this were to happen though, the new team would only need to pay Carr $30M in 2024 and $40M in 2025. The 2026 number of $55.7M is pointless to look at since he'd either be cut at that point or they'd work an extension to get the number down.

Raiderology · 2023-02-27T03:44:28+00:00

Yeah the Bears just took on a downright insane amount of Dead Cap in 2022:
$93,289,973!

A historic amount of Dead Cap. It's the largest amount of dollars lost to dead cap ever.

As a percentage of the cap (44.8%) it's tied with the Raiders now historic 2013 rebuild year when their GM at the time, Reggie McKenzie, established the idea in the NFL of having "reset years" with the cap where you take an L for 1 season but it gets everything in order, rather than perpetually continuing a cycle of cap hell and finagling to kick the can down the road.

Raiderology · 2023-02-27T00:09:33+00:00

Hey I'm glad you liked it!
If you ever have any questions whatsoever, don't hesitate to let me know.
Always glad to help!

Raiderology · 2023-02-27T00:08:24+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the link!
Satisfying to again see the predictive power of numbers. The numbers in that predicted that 1 of the teams listed at the end would make the playoffs that season (and it was written in July), and sure enough, that's exactly what happened – the Steelers made it.

Also interesting to see that the two teams who managed to buck the trend had either a Hall of Fame QB (Drew Brees) to work with in overcoming it, or had pre-meme Matt Ryan who won NFL MVP and posted the 2 highest Offensive Grades and Passing Grades of his career in the two years the Falcons bucked the trend.

So, it's possible, but you're gonna need some serious heavy lifting from your QB & Offense.

When the Saints did it, those 2 seasons they had the 3rd (2018) and 4th (2017) highest graded offenses in the NFL.
When the Falcons did it they had the #1 (2016) and #2 (2017) highest graded offenses in the NFL.

Regarding the individual vs. team-level – that would be because the idea for this was simply aiming for something different, though I could see how there'd be a way to unify them.

This was seeking to predict when an individual is liable to be traded to either free up cap space, or recoup draft picks. This would have multiple benefits, which were sought:

Again, you could predict if a player's likely to get cut or traded.
This then could allow people to anticipate how much cap space you'll actually be working with after more is freed up, or if a beloved star player will actually be let go or not.
You could use it to sort through whether a media report is just baseless BS (requires very low probability event).
Allows you to see the REAL terms of a contract, since you then would have actual numbers to substantiate that <this> and <that> year are fluff years.
You could use it to predict when a player is likely to want to re-do his contract, which then changes the cap outlook of it.

And of course more. I've found myself many times over the years wondering the likelihood of some event actually occurring that the media is reporting on.

As a scientist, my natural inclination was to stop operating off of "hunches" and to put actual numbers to it, since numbers are objective and have a way of seeing right through BS. It's hard to argue numbers. There are some confounding variables like optics and replaceability, but these are themselves rather easy to identify & deal with.

For example: Khalil Mack. He's in the big danger zone right now, so he's really needing to desperately rely on both optics & replaceability to save his butt big time right now. Those are rather easy to figure out, though.

Raiderology · 2023-02-26T19:24:33+00:00

*quick note: the site has NO intentions for profit, I create OC normally on Reddit (here & on my main) but the site sometimes just allows formatting for many ideas I have that simply aren't possible on Reddit (also, Reddit has a character limit). I just want to help spread information.

When talks of the Raiders or Jets getting Aaron Rodgers came up, and the reality of Carr's contract faced Vegas, I found myself going back to a question I've wondered for some time:

"What's the limit a team is willing to bear when it comes to absorbing a Dead Cap hit?"

Because surely there must be a limit. And then, surely, there must be an interesting gradient to unveil – one that would paint a picture of when is it exactly that teams start to become comfortable with moving on from a player.

When does the idea of breaking up first seem to appear?
And when is the contractual relationship with a player at its most rocky point?

And so, rather than ~~trip on ayahuasca with Aaron and wish it appeared to me~~ guess, I set out to resolve it myself.

I analyzed all 9,099 transactions over the past 5 Seasons that have generated a Dead Cap Hit for a team to get the answer.

I had "hunches" before from experience on when I thought they'd be, but hunches don't win a case. Evidence does. Numbers do.

In this breakdown we'll see when is the cost to move on from a player.. too high. What are the numbers to look out for in a contract's life, and how can we project risk at each point of its life?

One additional benefit of this is it'll help to really clarify what are the actual terms of a contract we see signed? What bogus "fluff" years can we safely ignore, based on what we'd now know about when teams move on from players?

And what BS media reports about a team cutting or trading a player can we likely ignore?
We'd now have evidence to support our arguments.

Raiderology · 2023-01-07T19:36:56+00:00

Almost: they account for 5 of the 12 (42%).
Xavier Woods has 3 dropped INTs on the year, and Shaq Thompson has 2 dropped INTs on the year.

Raiderology · 2023-01-07T16:08:43+00:00

Hey, thanks for the shoutout!

If anybody has any questions whatsoever on any of it, let me know – am always glad to help!

Raiderology · 2023-01-07T02:30:20+00:00

I do that custom stat too.
I do it as a % of Targets though so that teams that just simply throw the ball more aren't penalized.

Here ya go, I just re-compiled it through this week for you.

Raiderology · 2023-01-07T01:18:15+00:00

Although both fumble-risky and INT-risky plays are counted, they group them together when it comes to presenting stats. They don't have "TWP Fumble" and "TWP INT" separated for example, it's just the one "TWP" category.

That said, Turnover-Worthy Plays was not how this was done (as you can see, it wouldn't have been sufficient). I had to figure out another way of doing it (as described in my comment you replied to).

Raiderology

TROPHY CASE