Trading Maxx Crosby would come with a sky-high price tag for the Falcons

The Falcons need to trade for a pass rusher; It's that simple.

The club boasts the worst pass rush in football and has five sacks, the lowest in the league. It's also not like the Falcons come under pressure and simply aren't able to convert that pressure into sacks. They have recorded the 29th lightest finish in the league so far.

John Abraham doesn't walk through the doors of Flowery Branch. Expecting anyone in the organization — Arnold Ebiketie, Lorenzo Carter, etc. — to suddenly become a premier pass rusher is foolish. The fact is that if the Falcons want to improve in this area, they need to invest resources in this area.

Haason Reddick is the most readily available pass rusher, but he may not be the only one. A Maxx Crosby trade could potentially be on the table for the Falcons. The Raiders have already traded Davante Adams, and according to ESPN's Adam Schefter, one team has already reached out to Las Vegas and offered a first-round pick as a possible compensation.

“I think at the beginning of the year there would have been a team that would have asked the team about Maxx Crosby and come back with an A.” Schefter said on The Pat McAfee Show. “I think they said, 'Yeah, you're starting with multiple A's against this guy, and even then we wouldn't even consider it.'”

A first-round pick won't come close to the kind of compensation needed to get the conversation started. That’s assuming the Raiders would even consider trading the face of their franchise.

In 2018, the Raiders traded Khalil Mack to the Bears for two first-round picks. That would be the basis for a possible trade with Maxx Crosby. To attract the Raiders' interest, the Falcons would likely have to part with several first-round picks, second-rounders/third-rounders, etc.

That may seem a bit rich, but I don't think so. He has recorded 14.5 and 12.5 sacks over the last two seasons, respectively. Crosby already has 5.5 games in six games this season, and counting at home, that's more than the Falcons have as a team. He is also only 27 years old.

If you're the Falcons, the situation seems perfect. They have Kirk Cousins, the quarterback of the present, and Michael Penix Jr., the quarterback of the future, so there's no reason to hoard draft capital for a potential blockbuster move for a signal-caller. Additionally, they have also shown no ability to draft pass rushers.

Of course, this all assumes that the Raiders are even planning a Maxx Crosby trade. From his comments, it's clear that Crosby certainly isn't asking for this.

“We’re not going to make excuses,” Crosby said, via The Athletic. “We have the people in the building who can do it. …You can fall into the crowd and be like everyone else and be negative and sad, but I'm lucky to get to play this game. It doesn't stop me.

“The outside world will try to find everything they can to bring us down and rightly so after a game like this. It's (expletive). We have to stay together and find ways to get better and ignite the spark.”