Projected Contracts, Landing Spots for the NFL’s 50 Best Free Agents in 2026 | NFL Free Agency Guide for All 32 Teams
Trade grades: Maxx Crosby | Zaire Franklin | Garrett Bradbury | DJ Moore | David Montgomery | Tytus Howard
Free agency is here, and so are the takeaways. Here’s what we’ve got on what will be a very, very busy Monday across the NFL …
The Maxx Crosby blockbuster has been a long time coming. In case you missed it, the Raiders traded their best player, and one of the NFL’s elite pass rushers, to the Ravens on Friday night for the 14th pick in April’s draft and a first-rounder in what’s expected to be a loaded 2027 draft.
There’s risk on both sides. Over the weekend, ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweeted a list of players, going back to the 1980s, who were traded for two first-round picks. There were 10 nonquarterbacks preceding Crosby, and the former Raiders’ star, closing in on his 29th birthday, was older than all of them. So, the Ravens are swinging in a way few have swung. And for Vegas, there’s an inherent risk dealing away a player of Crosby’s magnitude.
As such, it’ll be a while before we can declare winners and losers of the deal.
But we can dig a little deeper into the deal. So here goes:
• We’ve covered, over the past couple of months, how all this stemmed from the knee injury that Crosby sustained against the Chiefs in October. He and the team managed the injury from that point forward, knowing he’d need surgery after the season. Crosby was working through the pain. On Dec. 23, they had the scans repeated. The Raiders decided to shut him down for the last two weeks of the season. So, Crosby sought two second opinions, and both doctors told him he could play. However, the team stuck to its guns.
At that point, after conversations with wellness coordinator Alex Guerrero, Crosby felt the team ended his season to pursue the first pick, which fractured trust and led Crosby to storm out of the facility on Dec. 26, setting the stage for the two-month saga to follow.
• Quietly, after the season, Crosby requested a trade, intimating to owner Mark Davis, with whom he shares a very close relationship, and GM John Spytek that he wanted to work with the team and find a solution that worked for everyone. He even told Davis that he wanted to help the team win, “even if I’m not here.” Crosby said he didn’t want things to get hostile or play out in the media.
• The arrival of Klint Kubiak didn’t move the needle much. Crosby had a good meeting with the Raiders’ new coach on the day he was introduced to the media, and was happy for his position coach, Rob Leonard, when Kubiak promoted him to defensive coordinator. But by then, it would have been hard to get Crosby to want to stay. He never wanted to leave Vegas, but that line was crossed in December, and the idea of going through another regime change (Kubiak would’ve been his sixth head coach) became far less appealing, even as much as he loved Davis.
• At the same time, the Raiders would've been fine keeping Crosby and working the issue out if the right offer didn't come along. Last year, they made Crosby the highest-paid nonquarterback in NFL history and crafted a contract that could be traded if need be.
Crosby's due $30.8 million cash this year, $29.8 million in ’27, $27.3 million in ’28 and $28.2 million in ’29, with the last two years de facto team options.
That deal now becomes a value for the Ravens. As it stands, Crosby's likely to wait until after this year for any sort of adjustment, wanting to prove himself with his new team. If that happens, with Aidan Hutchinson and Parsons now over $45 million per year, and Will Anderson Jr. potentially getting $50 million per year from Houston this offseason, Crosby will be well-positioned.
• At the combine, the Raiders found a robust market for Crosby, as you’d expect.
The framework of Vegas’s ask at that point was built off the Dallas–Green Bay blockbuster in August, which brought Micah Parsons to the Packers for two first-round picks and DT Kenny Clark. Because of Crosby’s age (he will be 29 in August), the Raiders knew it might be tough to find that kind of haul. But with the Bills, Bears, Cowboys and Ravens among those lined up as the league descended on Indianapolis, the Raiders had leverage to drive the price up.
• The Eagles did check in after those four teams and piqued Crosby’s interest, but Philly was never a factor with its focus on retaining Jaelan Phillips. The Bengals, on the verge of losing Trey Hendrickson in free agency, were another latecomer to the party. By then, over a quarter of the league’s 32 teams had shown some level of interest in Crosby, with a few others that he had less interest in going to throwing their hats in the ring as well.
• A dividing line for the Raiders was where the picks being discussed landed in the first round. The Cowboys held the 12th pick, while the Ravens had the 14th selection. And it led to teams bowing out. The Bills were the most prominent example, holding the 26th pick, which was 500 points on the Jimmy Johnson draft chart, less valuable than Dallas’s pick, and 400 points less valuable than Baltimore’s pick. For reference, 500 points is the value of the 40th pick in the draft, and 400 points is the value of the 50th pick.
That meant Buffalo would essentially have to add a second-round pick to whatever Dallas or Baltimore offered, which is why, in the end, the Bills bowed out of the bidding.
• The Ravens’ willingness to go to two first-round picks and do it without any back-end complications wound up winning the day. Dallas would only go to first- and second-round picks and, like Baltimore, didn’t want to add a player to the package. From Baltimore’s perspective, the opportunity to add Crosby to a defense with stars Roquan Smith, Kyle Hamilton, Nate Wiggins, Marlon Humphrey and (if healthy) Nnamdi Madubuike, and give the team a better shot to win it all with Lamar Jackson, was too much to pass up.
Several people, including some who’ve worked in Baltimore, were stunned by the result because the deal was so un-Raven-like—the organization had never traded even one first-round pick, let alone two, for a veteran player. But Crosby fits GM Eric DeCosta’s profile in going after players well after they’ve gotten their first big contract, because there’s more certainty with those kinds of guys. And he fits what new coach Jesse Minter will look to build (to be fair, Crosby pretty much fits what any new coach would be looking to build).
A fascinating piece to this trade came into place at the very end, when Crosby told Kubiak, again, that he wanted to do whatever he could to help the Raiders win. He said he still loves the organization and loves Davis, and, cognizant of his legacy with the team, wanted everyone to come out of what’s been a messy few months in the best place possible.
Of course, by then, Crosby knew he was probably going to a really good one.
The Bills’ moves over the past week set the stage for a defensive-focused approach in the next few days. And that’ll be necessary because new DC Jim Leonhard’s scheme is markedly different from what Sean McDermott and Bob Babich ran last year—some edge guys, like Joey Bosa and A.J. Epenesa, for example, aren’t quite the fits for Buffalo that they were previously.
Yes, Buffalo could still add to its offense. But trading for DJ Moore and re-signing Connor McGovern absolutely takes some of the pressure off that side of the ball. So here’s a little more on how those two deals came together for the Bills:
• The first piece of the Moore acquisition is how Joe Brady’s institutional knowledge on the 28-year-old—the two were together in Carolina for the better part of two years—played into the acquisition. As the Bills saw it, Moore was better than any free-agent receiver and would be their best receiver coming in without the team having to guess how he’d fit in Brady’s offense. Brady also knew that Moore was a top-shelf teammate and could be a torchbearer and even a captain for him in his first year.
Moore was privately over the moon when the news of the trade came down, and the Bills were O.K. paying the freight (a 2026 second-round pick, with a fifth-rounder coming back with Moore) to get him at a rate of $23.5 million per year for the next four seasons.
As a versatile piece that Brady can move around and play inside and out, Moore gives the Bills another receiver, adding to Khalil Shakir, who can be a force after the catch. No, he’s not a traditional No. 1, and he plays more like a hybrid than a pure wideout, but his presence should change the dynamic for guys such as Shakir, Dalton Kincaid and James Cook.
• McGovern was, indeed, a player the Bills weren’t sure they’d be able to keep.
Over the past couple of weeks, there’d been concern among many teams in need that the center market was about to explode, as the guard market did in 2025 (more on that in a minute). With that in mind, some believed that McGovern was going to get between $15 million and $18 million per year, which might’ve made it tough for Buffalo to keep him.
But over the past few days, McGovern showed a genuine desire to stay with the team, Josh Allen did a little recruiting, and the team was able to hammer out a four-year, $52 million deal to keep him in Buffalo.
So, now, the Bills have a pretty good idea of what the offense is going to look like, and that’s even with the likely departure of a solid starter at guard in David Edwards.
As for what they’ll look for on defense, as we said, the Bills did have their toe in the Maxx Crosby sweepstakes, so the edge is a logical place to look first. John Franklin-Myers would make some sense, too, as an inside/outside piece for Leonhard’s front, but the bidding there could wind up pricing the Bills out. What seems certain is that Buffalo still has some remodeling to do on defense, with Allen’s unit in good shape.
Perhaps the most talked about name in league circles over the past week has been none other than Tyler Linderbaum. The Ravens’ center isn’t a perfect player—he can get pushed around a little bit as an undersized athlete for his position, and last year wasn’t his best year.
But he’s also a player among the very best in the league at what he does, reaching the free-agent market. The fact that he’s hitting the market is primarily circumstantial. All offensive linemen are grouped together in the formula that determines the numbers for the fifth-year option for former first-round picks, and for franchise and transition tags. That means guards and centers have their options and tags at tackle numbers, which is why the Ravens declined to pick up Linderbaum’s option and chose not to tag him.
My understanding is Linderbaum’s camp is shooting for $25 million per year, which would be a whopping 38% increase on the $18 million per year that the Chiefs’ Creed Humphrey got in 2024 to become the NFL’s highest-paid center.
I’m not sure if Linderbaum will get there. However, I’d expect the Commanders, Raiders and Browns all to be in the bidding, and the tenor of it would affect a bunch of other teams, as well.
One example was the Chargers, whose GM Joe Hortiz was in Baltimore when Linderbaum was drafted, signing Commanders C Tyler Biadasz to a three-year, $30 million deal after Bradley Bozeman retired. That’s more, on a per-year basis, than Biadasz was making in Washington. Another example was the Bears trading for Patriots center Garrett Bradbury after the surprise retirement of Drew Dalman.
In both cases, the teams forecasted an explosion in the center market and jumped on more affordable options before it happened. Most believed McGovern was going to be part of it before he decided that he’d rather stay in Buffalo. And now, we’ll see how far Linderbaum pushes the financial envelope, with guys such as Carolina’s Cade Mays standing as the potential beneficiaries after he finds a new home.
The other linemen won’t come cheap, either. This is Bill Parcells’s old planet theory coming to life: Parcells’s premise being that there are only so many big people who can move a certain way on earth, so when they become available, you better go get them.
