The 2024 season was supposed to mark progress for the Las Vegas Raiders. No one expected a Super Bowl run, but with star talent on both sides of the ball, it at least looked like a franchise beginning to find its footing. Instead, the year unraveled. A revolving door of quarterbacks, coaching instability, and locker room discontent left the Raiders near the bottom of the league. At the center of it all was Davante Adams — the All-Pro wide receiver who had once campaigned to be traded to Vegas, now clearly eager to get out.
His longtime friend and teammate, Maxx Crosby, believes the breaking point wasn’t about coaching or even wins and losses — it started when the team parted ways with quarterback Derek Carr.
How It Fell Apart in Vegas: Maxx Crosby Opens Up on Davante Adams’ Exit and the Las Vegas Raiders’ Lost Year
“That’s when it started with the Davante situation,” Crosby said on the Glory Daze podcast with Johnny Manziel. “Him and Derek were together at Fresno. It just seemed like it was almost too good to be true. Then the Derek situation didn’t work out. He gets benched at the end of the year. He didn’t even finish the season with Davante, and then he’s out of there. So it’s like… now what the f— is the plan? That’s his guy.”
Adams’ chemistry with Carr was a driving force in his initial desire to come to Vegas. But after Carr’s abrupt exit and the failure of Josh McDaniels’ vision, Adams appeared stuck in a directionless offense. That unease festered. Eventually, Adams was traded midseason to the New York Jets, reuniting with Aaron Rodgers — only to see that situation fall apart, too.
Still, Adams maintained his move was necessary.
“It’s really frustrating, but it was the right thing to do,” he said on Up & Adams. “Nobody can look at this move and say it made more sense for me to stay in Vegas. If they do, then they just hatin’ and just talking like how they do.”
His metaphor for the Raiders era was more blunt.
“It’s like if you’re going to war and somebody gives you a knife and everybody else got rifles,” Adams said. “Then somebody finds a rifle and hands it to you, and you go to shoot — and it jams. That doesn’t mean you should’ve kept the knife. You made the right move, it just didn’t work out the way you planned.”
The frustration didn’t end in New York. After joining the Rams this offseason, Adams made a pointed comparison between the culture in Los Angeles and what he left behind in Las Vegas.
“Everybody’s in a good mood [with the Rams]. It’s not like a dark cloud over the building,” Adams told ESPN’s Sarah Barshop. “And I’ve experienced that quite a bit over the last few years. So, it’s a glaring difference when you come into a building like this.”
Meanwhile, Crosby also addressed the downfall of Antonio Pierce, who rose from interim coach in 2023 to full-time head coach in 2024 before being fired after just one season.
“The AP situation is unfortunate,” Crosby said. “I went to bat for him. We had a great relationship, but it just didn’t turn out the way we expected.”
The Raiders have since brought in Pete Carroll to steady the franchise, and Crosby seems open to the new direction. The team also flipped the Adams deal into a draft pick that brought in quarterback Geno Smith, signaling a broader reset.
Still, the Adams saga lingers as a symbol of what could’ve been — a superstar wideout, reunited with his college quarterback, under an offensive-minded head coach — only to watch it all fall apart within two years.
But with Sean McVay calling plays and Matthew Stafford throwing him the ball, Adams now enters 2025 in a system designed to maximize his skill set. Both Manziel and Crosby agreed on the Glory Daze podcast: the 32-year-old receiver is primed for a bounce-back season in Los Angeles.
And this time, he’s not bringing a knife to the fight.