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Eastern Michigan’s Maxx Crosby has official visit planned with the Bills

Erik Turner
03/10/2019
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We are in the thick of draft season and official visits are quietly being set up across the league. The Bills reportedly have one lined up with defensive end Maxx Crosby from Eastern Michigan. According to our sources, Crosby plans on making the trek to Buffalo in mid-April, a city he has played in as part of the Mid-American Conference.


The redshirt junior capped off his 37-game career with 162 solo tackles, 41 tackles for loss and 20 sacks. In 2018 alone, he created 48 total pressures, which was good for 16th in the country. That’s an incredible amount of production! But it doesn’t end there. Crosby also forced eight fumbles, recovered four, got his hands on four passes and even intercepted one over the course of his career. He even took two of those turnovers and converted them into points.

I had a chance to take a look at some of his film and it had me laughing out loud it was so incredible. Let’s start with his number one trait: athleticism. It’s a critical one too, because while he has the prototype measurables that the Bills front office loves, he is lean and lacks raw strength.

His ability to consistently win with quickness, flexibility and hand usage flash rep in and rep out. Some guys fight blocks off with force, Crosby is able to avoid contact by using his agility. As the puller approaches to kick Crosby out, he side steps, rips and makes the tackle.

Shrinking the blocking surface area is a tough technique to coach, typically a player has it or doesn’t. You will see Florida State’s Brian Burns execute it a bunch because he possesses similar flexibility and short area explosiveness.  Crosby’s film is littered with athletic plays to avoid kick out blocks or cut blocks, which explains the 41 tackles for loss over the course of his career. Disruption is his middle name.

This type of production and movement skills shouldn’t be a surprise, as Crosby tested as an elite athlete at the NFL Scouting Combine.

He is also a top-5 edge SPARQ player, which puts him in very good company.

Crosby’s understanding of his skillset goes a long way too. He doesn’t just play at one speed, he changes up his tempo on rushes. Here he slow plays the rush, so the tackle angle sets out wide. The angle taken by Crosby gives him two options to get to the QB. He executes an explosive swim move inside and doesn’t forget to finish clearing the tackle with his left arm.

The lateral explosion that you see reflected in his vertical, broad jump and three-cone drills are all exemplified in this rush. Crosby attacks the rusher up-field but then bursts back across his face. He covers an enormous amount of distance to gain inside leverage, executes the arm over move to seal that leverage, but then as the guard comes to help, he immediately transitions to a rip. Even with the guard draped all over him, he is still able to explode to get a piece of the ball!

I was obviously blown away at how much of an athlete he was, but he showed a wide variety of pass rush moves as well.

He flashed double-handed swats, long arm moves with precise placement, swim moves, arm-overs and rips to accentuate his high-motor.

Crosby graded out at the tail end of the 3rd round. It doesn’t take long to figure out that with a year in an NFL weight room and reps against NFL competition, Crosby could easily transform into a starter one day.

 

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Buffalo bills | Eastern Michigan | MAC | Maxx Crosby | Mid-American Conference | NFL Draft | NFL Scouting Combine

Erik Turner

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