I'll give Maxx Crosby credit: he's certainly not shying away from expectations.
Crosby's one of the few players on the Raiders roster that's been around the team through multiple organizational resets, and it'd be hard to blame him if he was just a tiny bit skeptical about yet another rebuild. Instead, Crosby's embracing the Pete Carroll era as well as can be expected, and seems to have a slightly-renewed lease on life as one of the Raiders' cornerstone players.
The latest example of that came this past week, when Crosby did an interview with The Athletic while attending the annual Sack Summit in Las Vegas. While talking about the team's mindset heading into this upcoming season, Crosby made a comparison that sounds a little lofty (and probably is), but goes a long way in explaining why he's such a beloved figure in Las Vegas.
Maxx Crosby thinks the Raiders can be the NFL's Oklahoma City Thunder
"Anytime you go out there, you want to be in a position to win," Crosby said. "Individual success and things like that are awesome, but it's not why you play the game. You play to win. We just saw it in the NBA: OKC, just a couple years ago, was one of the worst teams in the league. But they had a lot of young guys, they trusted the process, they developed and now they're the world champions. We're trying to win. I want to win so badly. I put everything into it. I want everybody else to think like that. And that's been my goal, just bringing as many guys along as I possibly can."
The Thunder were historically good this last season – I'm not sure the Raiders have that high of a ceiling – but it's not hard to see some of the similarities that Crosby's talking about. It's also exactly what you want to hear from one of your team's most vocal leaders; NFL windows come and go in an instant, and there's no reason to believe that, if things bounce their way, the Raiders can't be a 9- or 10-win team in the next couple years.
It's lofty, but considering the Raiders have been way closer to, like, the Wizards lately, any comparisons to the Thunder are fine with me.
