"He's like, 'I swear to God'" - When Maxx Crosby recalled Jon Gruden threatening to cut him from Raiders during heated practice session

Maxx Crosby is one of the best pass rushers in the league today. He's a master of the tackle for loss, a multiple-time All-Pro and Pro Bowler, and a rare bright spot for a franchise that has been struggling to succeed ever since its last Super Bowl run. But once upon a time, he thought things were going to go differently.

Back in 2019, the league's current second-highest-paid defender by AAV ($106.5 million over three years) was just a fresh-faced fourth-round rookie out of unfancied Mid-American program Eastern Michigan. He turned out to be very good at sacking quarterbacks, ultimately tallying ten of the stat.

But the then-Oakland Raiders' head coach at the time, Jon Gruden, was not always fond of his tenacity, even at one point threatening to cut him for deflecting too many passes during practice. Speaking on "Pardon My Take" last June, he recalled:

"He would get so mad about batting balls, like, we'll be in practice doing team, and he refused to let us bat the ball. But I would tell him, 'Why the (expletive) are we practicing to not bat the balls, but in (the) game, they're going to be doing the same (expletive). So what's the point?'"

Then, in one such camp, Crosby batted a ball and celebrated. Gruden looked irritated, and he soon reached the limit of his patience the third time it happened:

"He's like, 'Stop! Stop f**king swatting the ball! Because I'll f**king cut your ass, I swear to God!' We do one more time; I'm looking at him like, 'All right, let's go back to the huddle,' like, he's shutting down practice. And I'm like, 'What?'"

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Jon Gruden later clarified the threat to cut Maxx Crosby for swatting passes

Eight months after that podcast episode, Jon Gruden, now an analyst for Barstool Sports, met Maxx Crosby once again on Super Bowl LIX week for an episode "Gruden Goes Long." There, he clarified:

"Our tackles, our offensive linemen were not allowed to cut the defensive linemen below the legs in quick protection (in training camp). So I told the D-line since we were not going to block low, not to jump up and bat balls down."

But when the defensive end started batting balls and keeping up his pace, that was when expasperation turned into the aforementioned threat: he was not going to be cut from the team; rather, the offensive linemen would be allowed to target his legs when blocking ("cutting off" his balance) - which is normally banned during games.

After the revelation, Crosby said:

"For five years. I legitimately thought you were going to cut me on the field."

The Raiders had fired Gruden in the middle of the 2021 season after he was revealed to have made multiple discriminatory emails between 2011 and 2018.