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Paul Gutierrez, ESPN Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS – As frustrating a day as Maxx Crosby had in the Las Vegas Raiders‘ 32-13 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Raiders Pro Bowl edge rusher said his late-game sideline shove of assistant Mike Caldwell was a “love push.”
The incident was caught by CBS cameras after Crosby’s shared sack of Justin Fields with defensive tackle John Jenkins late in the game.
“I have my phone blowing up as I’m in the cold tub, trying to get ready for next week already, and people, you know how they do it — they just spin narratives,” Crosby said with a laugh. “Mike Caldwell’s a great dude. We have a great relationship and we do that all the time. It’s like people look at it, ‘Oh, they’re losing and then Maxx pushes him.'”
Caldwell, who played 11 seasons as a linebacker in the NFL, is the Raiders’ run game coordinator/linebackers coach.
“That’s how we play football — we’re grown men, we’re alpha males, we don’t greet each other the same,” Crosby added. “So he was hyping me up and I hyped him up.
“We’re down, but it just showed we’re not quitting.”
Crosby then spent several seconds looking at cameras in the scrum at his postgame locker and said, “I love Mike Caldwell” three times, and “That’s my guy” twice more.
“There’s literally zero…it’s completely made up out of dust,” Crosby said. “The [CBS] camera, they made it look bad. It looked like I was throwing him out of the club, but that was not what happened at all.”
Crosby laughed about the incident, but neither he, nor Raiders coach Antonio Pierce were in a joking mood about the state of the team after three turnovers and a blocked punt contributed to a loss dropping Las Vegas’ record to 2-4.
“Our record is what it [is]…it’s not good enough,” Pierce said. “We’re not coaching well enough, we’re not playing well enough, and we’re not detailing well enough. More importantly, when you turn the ball over, you don’t give yourself a chance.
“It starts with discipline — we [only] had four penalties, but they were at critical moments. The turnover thing is embarrassing. We don’t respect the ball enough, so we don’t even deserve a chance to put ourselves into position to win.”
The Raiders’ turnover differential for the season is an NFL-worst -10, their worst through six games since 2006, per ESPN Research. The -10 turnover margin is also the worst through six games in the NFL since the 2021 Jacksonville Jaguars.
Las Vegas has been outscored 39-14 off turnovers this season, tied for the second-worst such mark in the league.
Said Crosby, who now has a team-leading 5.5 sacks in five games: “You can fall into the crowd and be like everybody else and be negative and sad. [But] I’m blessed…blessed to be able to play this game. I would play if I made $0 doing it. I love doing this s–t. I live it every day, so it doesn’t stop me.
“The outside world’s going to try to find everything to bring us down, and rightfully so after a game like that. It’s bulls–t. We’ve got to find ways to get better and it sucks for the fans. I want them to see the best version of us and we haven’t been able to do that.
“So, unfortunately, we lost, but we have to respond. That’s literally all we can do.”