It's July, which means it's officially the time of year when Las Vegas Raiders fans think their favorite team has a chance to turn the tide and make noise in the NFL Playoffs. It's a great time for LA Chargers fans, who get plenty of offseason bulletin-board material to deploy during the regular season.
Every year it's the same story. The Raiders make one or two big swings and the entire fanbase gets convinced that this will be the year it all comes together. Yet time and time again, the Raiders fall short of expectations and have to hit the reset button.
But this is the year it will be different, right!? After all, the Raiders hired Super Bowl-winning head coach Pete Carroll and found a new starting quarterback in Geno Smith. With Brock Bowers in his sophomore year and Maxx Crosby in his prime, Raiders fans are once again convincing themselves that this year is different.
Fans aren't the only ones falling into the same perpetual trap. Crosby himself is falling into the exact same head coach trap he has fallen into multiple times. Crosby has nothing but amazing things to say about Carroll, which is a common trend for the All-Pro edge rusher.
"He's true to that. It's not fake energy. And it's not just him, it's the assistant coaches, the whole building. It just feels different," Crosby told ESPN's Ryan McFadden.
"Pete creates that culture where everyone knows it's hard. You're going to work your ass off, but you've got a whole group and an organization of people that all got to be on the same wavelength and go in the same direction. That's one of the hardest things you could do."
Chargers fans can't help but laugh as Maxx Crosby falls into the same Raiders trap
Another year, another Raiders head coach, another instance where Crosby sells his fanbase on the guy in charge. To be fair, we think Crosby 100% believes what he is saying, it's just hilarious given how this has become a recurring trend.
Obviously, Crosby isn't going to come out and bash his new head coach anytime there is a coaching change. However, it's a lot harder for Raiders fans to actually get for these comments when the same exact comments are made every single year regardless of who is hired.
At some point it is the boy who cried wolf. Crosby has cried wolf multiple times.
Let's not forget that Crosby was one of the biggest supporters of Antonio Pierce after he had some promising results as the interim head coach in 2023. Crosby was leading the charge so much, in fact, that he publicly put pressure on the Raiders by opening the door for a trade request if Pierce wasn't hired.
That didn't really work out for Crosby or the Raiders. Pierce won four games in his lone season as head coach and doesn't even have a job in the NFL at the time of writing.
Don't worry, Pierce isn't the only head coach Crosby has hyped up. With the benefit of hindsight, Crosby has been very vocal about how the team messed up the Josh McDaniels hiring. But that wasn't the case in the moment! In fact, Crosby went on to talk about how great his relationship was with McDaniels not just once, but twice!
Put a new head coach in front of Crosby and he is going to love him, plain and simple. Excuse Chargers fans for not buying this hype after hearing the exact same story offseason after offseason.
At the end of the day, the Raiders are still the same team that has not won a playoff game since 2002 (when Crosby was four years old). Until they break that streak, that is all the Raiders will ever be to Chargers fans.