Trey Hendrickson or Maxx Crosby? Breaking down Ravens’ defining choice.
· Yahoo Sports
BALTIMORE — At the very least, it’s an amusing hypothetical.
In Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season, the Ravens take the field. On one side of the defensive line is All-Pro pass rusher Maxx Crosby, and on the other is All-Pro pass rusher Trey Hendrickson. Maybe in the middle, with a hand in the dirt, is All-Pro pass rusher Nnamdi Madubuike. That’s nightmare fuel for any quarterback.
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It’s also not reality.
Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said that the club pitched Hendrickson’s camp on the idea of teaming up with Crosby, who at the time had just been traded to Baltimore. DeCosta claims that it was “definitely a possibility” before the Ravens scuttled the deal, even though both players are owed more than $110 million over the next four years of their current deals. Hendrickson said that it would have been “a phenomenal opportunity.” As for Madubuike, details about his neck injury and availability are still murky.
Whether the Ravens made the right call balking on Crosby in favor of Hendrickson won’t become clear until at least the start of the season, and more fairly later this calendar year. In either scenario, the Ravens were willing to branch out from the status quo — the franchise had never traded a first-round draft pick and had never previously signed a free agent to such a hefty deal. Baltimore’s brass sounded comfortable with their decision after the ink dried.
“[Hendrickson] is a guy that I’ve always admired as a player,” DeCosta said Friday morning. “He is relentless, a great player, pass rusher, a game wrecker. He’s a guy that can take over games in critical situations and help us finish. We are just very happy.”
But is he better than Crosby, or does he at least make more sense in Baltimore’s quest to build a championship contender?
First, there’s the age and health component.
Hendrickson turns 32 in December. He missed 10 games in 2025 because of injuries and is coming off core muscle surgery to address a lingering hip/pelvis injury from Week 6. Hendrickson said that he was cleared in January, feels fresh and is eager to step back on the field. The Ravens paid him $112 million on a deal that would keep him in Baltimore until he’s 36, but DeCosta thinks that Hendrickson has “a lot left in the tank,” recalling back-to-back 17 1/2-sack seasons in 2023 and 2024.
In the meantime, Hendrickson is clamoring “to rebuild my body and to mold it in the way I want it to play.” The Ravens are counting on the pre-injury version of the four-time Pro Bowl selection.
Crosby, on the other hand, turns 29 this summer. He finished this past season on the injured reserve and had surgery to repair a torn meniscus in January. At one time, Baltimore committed to trading significant draft capital for four years of Crosby on a higher annual salary. It was risky, but Crosby’s ceiling eased concerns. Then the Ravens brought him in for a physical and cooled off on the idea.
“He’s a guy that I really admire as a player,” DeCosta said, who sounded despondent about how the Crosby deal transpired. “You’ve all watched him play, so you all know what he’s like as a player. This is a guy that plays like a Raven.”
Crosby’s all-around defensive prowess gets the edge. He has nearly twice as many tackles for loss compared with Hendrickson (133 to 74), has recorded 13 more pass deflections, and his run defense is leagues better than the former Bengals star. Also, Crosby’s current contract expires after his age-32 season — when he’d be just one year older than Hendrickson is now.
But since 2019, the former Bengals edge rusher has better pressure numbers. Hendrickson has 79 sacks in that span, 10 more than Crosby, and his pressure rate (12.3%) beats out Crosby’s (10.4%).
On Friday, first-year Ravens coach Jesse Minter came with a stat locked and loaded for the Hendrickson naysayers.
“One of the things that stood out to me — since 2021, Trey is second in the NFL in fourth-quarter sacks,” he said. “There was a point in time this year where he was actually first; he missed a little bit of time, and [Danielle] Hunter ended up passing him up. But when we talk about being able to have a closer mentality and finish games and dominate in the fourth quarter, Trey is the epitome of that with how he’s played the last four or five years.”
No matter, both offer pass-rushing power unbeknownst to recent Ravens teams. Hendrickson and Crosby have each posted four double-digit sack seasons since 2019. Since then, only two Baltimore edge rushers have done it once: Kyle Van Noy had 12 1/2 in 2024, and Odafe Oweh logged 10 the same year.
To think that the Ravens were truly willing to pair Hendrickson and Crosby is a logical fallacy. It would have been quite the risky investment to commit more than $60 million annually to two players in the same position group on top of the lucrative deals for Lamar Jackson, Kyle Hamilton, Roquan Smith, Madubuike and others.
Bringing in Hendrickson alone is enough to boost Baltimore’s pass rush. But the question remains, and it will linger in Baltimore for several months: Did they make the right call backing off Crosby and signing Hendrickson?