Maxx Crosby injury update: Raiders star walks free as trade noise dares Vegas to make a real decision

Maxx Crosby looks like a player who expects to be ready by Week 1. His future with the Las Vegas Raiders still does not look that simple.In a video he posted to X on Friday, Feb. 27, the star pass rusher walked around his home court and calmly buried a free throw after knee surgery.

"No crutches anymore," Crosby said. "We're walking, we're moving.

" For a 28-year-old who just had his meniscus cleaned up, the visual is exactly what teams wanted to see while calls about his availability keep coming.

Maxx Crosby’s knee rehab looks on track after meniscus surgery and a year playing hurt

Crosby first hurt his left knee in mid-October against the Kansas City Chiefs and kept playing through it. He suited up for 15 games, even as the Raiders slid to a 3-14 finish and the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

He still put up 10 sacks, 73 total tackles and 28 tackles for loss, which is why the rest of the league keeps circling.The team finally shut him down for the last two games, prioritizing his long-term health with the season already lost. On Jan. 7, Crosby had surgery to repair the meniscus. Not long after, he posted a photo from his hospital bed on Instagram with the caption: "Great Risk = Great Reward…. Got Work To Do. Reset & Reload… Year 8 Will Be The Greatest Year Yet."

The new video backs that up. Crosby is not sprinting or cutting, but he is walking smoothly, putting weight on the knee and moving without a visible limp. For any front office that needs proof he will be ready to rush the passer in September, that clip gives them something concrete, not just optimism.

Trade rumors, cap math and a front office that keeps calling Maxx Crosby an elite cornerstone

The cleanest part of the story is the medical update. Everything else is layered.ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler previously reported that Crosby’s chances of returning to the Raiders in 2026 were "pretty small" despite the absence of a formal trade request.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero went a step further on air, openly floating a near-term window. "Is there a world where Maxx Crosby gets traded in the next 7 to 10 days? I believe there is," Pelissero said. "We’re not there yet, in terms of a deal actually getting done.

But almost every player in the NFL has a price. … I do believe that there is a possibility of Maxx Crosby being traded sometime between now and the start of the league year (March 11)."The logic is easy to follow. Las Vegas is in a major rebuilding phase after four straight seasons without a playoff berth and last year’s 3-14 collapse. Moving Crosby would hurt on the field but could reshape the roster. A deal would leave roughly $5.1 million in dead money while freeing close to $30.7 million in cap space and bringing back premium draft picks, according to OverTheCap.com.New general manager John Spytek keeps pushing the other side of the story in public.

"Maxx and I have a great relationship," Spytek said Tuesday, via NFL.com’s Kevin Patra. "He's in the building every day getting healthy right now. We talk on the phone, we text. So I have a great relationship with Maxx." He doubled down on how the organization views its best defender. "Maxx is an elite player, and I've been very upfront from the start when I got here that we're in the business of having really good players on the team and we need a lot more of them," Spytek added.

"It's hard to build a great team without elite players."So the picture at the end of February looks like this: Crosby’s knee is trending the right way, the trade market clearly exists, and the Raiders are trying to sound like a team that can rebuild without giving up its best player. The video shows he is getting ready for Week 1. The rest of the league is trying to figure out which uniform he will be wearing when it kicks off.