Player
Maxx Crosby
DL · LV Raiders
Tackles for loss measure the whole job, not just the glamour half: an edge rusher who leads this list is winning on run downs, screens, and stunts, snaps where sack artists rest. It is also the stat that most resists scheme luck, because a TFL requires beating your man and finishing in space. Leading it over seven full seasons, ahead of two players with Defensive Player of the Year hardware, is the strongest claim Crosby has to being an every-down force rather than a pass-rush specialist.
The motor
Since the day he entered the league, nobody in football has more tackles for loss. Not Garrett. Not Watt. Nobody.
RareMost tackles for loss, entire NFL, 2019-2025 regular seasons
| Rank | Player | TFL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maxx Crosby | 133 |
| 2 | Myles Garrett | 128 |
| 3 | T.J. Watt | 114 |
| 4 | Brian Burns | 98 |
| 5 | Nick Bosa | 91 |
Sacks get the contracts, so start with the stat Crosby actually leads the sport in: 133 tackles for loss since 2019, more than any player in football, ahead of Myles Garrett (128) and T.J. Watt (114). He is sixth in sacks over the same span, but when you count every play that ended in the offensive backfield, run or pass, the seven-year king is the fourth-round pick from Eastern Michigan.
Why it matters. Tackles for loss measure the whole job, not just the glamour half: an edge rusher who leads this list is winning on run downs, screens, and stunts, snaps where sack artists rest. It is also the stat that most resists scheme luck, because a TFL requires beating your man and finishing in space. Leading it over seven full seasons, ahead of two players with Defensive Player of the Year hardware, is the strongest claim Crosby has to being an every-down force rather than a pass-rush specialist.
MYTH TEST: gaudy sack totals on a losing team are empty stats. His close-game sack rate is the highest of his entire era.
Share of career sacks recorded with the game inside one score, rushers with 55+ sacks since 2019
| Player | Total sacks | One-score sacks | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maxx Crosby | 69.5 | 52.0 | 74.8% |
| Brian Burns | 71.0 | 51.0 | 71.8% |
| T.J. Watt | 95.0 | 68.0 | 71.6% |
| Myles Garrett | 105.0 | 62.0 | 59.0% |
| Micah Parsons | 65.0 | 30.0 | 46.2% |
The stat-padder theory has a specific prediction: a rusher on a bad team fattens up in blowouts, when the outcome is settled and the offense has to throw. So check the score at the snap. Fifteen rushers have 55+ sacks since 2019, and Crosby has the highest share of his sacks with the game inside one score: 74.8%. Garrett sits at 59.0%, Parsons at 46.2%. The ruling: refuted. Crosby gets home precisely when the game is still being decided.
Why it matters. Playing for a team that trails a lot should, if anything, starve an edge rusher of high-leverage snaps, since trailing defenses see more runs and quick throws late. Crosby leading his whole cohort in close-game sack share, on a team that spent most of those years under .500, means the production is concentrated in the minutes that decide outcomes. Whatever went wrong in Vegas across that stretch, it was not the timing of its best player.
Edge rushers rotate to stay fresh. Crosby played 3,091 snaps in three years, more than any defensive lineman alive.
AnomalyMost defensive snaps by a defensive lineman, 2021-2023 regular seasons
| Player | Def snaps | Avg snap share |
|---|---|---|
| Maxx Crosby | 3,091 | 90.5% |
| Daron Payne | 2,669 | 80.8% |
| Christian Wilkins | 2,583 | 76.6% |
| DeForest Buckner | 2,557 | 75.3% |
| Aaron Donald | 2,524 | 86.3% |
Pass rushing is an anaerobic sport, so every team rotates its edges. Vegas did not. From 2021 through 2023 Crosby logged 3,091 defensive snaps, 422 more than any other defensive lineman in football, at a 90.5% average snap share. The players closest to him are interior linemen built for volume; among edge rushers there is no second place. He led the position in workload while producing 12.5 and 14.5 sack seasons in 2022 and 2023.
Why it matters. Snap share is the stat coaches control, which makes it a confession: the Raiders looked at their roster and concluded there was no down on which the backup was the better option. Producing peak sack totals at a 90% share breaks the standard fatigue model for the position; most elite rushers post their efficiency on 65-75% shares. It is also the stat that quietly explains the TFL crown, since you cannot lead the league in backfield tackles from the bench.
Pick 106, franchise king
69.5 sacks in his first seven seasons. Every player ahead of him from the 2010s drafts went in the first round, except one third-rounder.
MilestoneMost sacks through a player's first 7 seasons, players drafted 2010-2019
| Player | Draft slot | Sacks, years 1-7 |
|---|---|---|
| T.J. Watt | Rd 1, #30 | 96.5 |
| Myles Garrett | Rd 1, #1 | 88.5 |
| Aaron Donald | Rd 1, #13 | 85.5 |
| Von Miller | Rd 1, #2 | 83.5 |
| Chandler Jones | Rd 1, #21 | 77.0 |
| J.J. Watt | Rd 1, #11 | 76.0 |
| Ryan Kerrigan | Rd 1, #16 | 71.5 |
| Brian Burns | Rd 1, #16 | 71.0 |
| Khalil Mack | Rd 1, #5 | 70.5 |
| Justin Houston | Rd 3, #70 | 69.5 |
| Maxx Crosby | Rd 4, #106 | 69.5 |
Take every player drafted from 2010 through 2019 and count sacks through his first seven seasons. The top of the list is a first-round hall: both Watts, Garrett, Donald, Miller, Mack. Then, tied at 69.5 with third-rounder Justin Houston, comes the 106th pick of the 2019 draft. Crosby is the only day-3 selection anywhere near the leaderboard, keeping seven-year pace with players taken 100 picks earlier.
Why it matters. Where you are drafted determines your early snaps, your scheme role, and how long a team waits for you, which is why this leaderboard is normally a first-round club. A fourth-rounder crashing it means Crosby beat two selection filters at once: every team passed on him three times, and then he out-produced nearly everyone they took instead. Among Raiders draft picks of the last quarter century, pick 106 in 2019 is the single best value the franchise has gotten.
The Raiders sack record since 1999 is not close: Crosby 69.5, Khalil Mack 40.5.
ComparisonMost sacks in a Raiders uniform (OAK + LV), 1999-2025 regular seasons
| Player | Sacks |
|---|---|
| Maxx Crosby | 69.5 |
| Khalil Mack | 40.5 |
| Derrick Burgess | 39.0 |
| Tommy Kelly | 35.5 |
| Roderick Coleman | 28.5 |
This franchise has employed a Defensive Player of the Year (Mack), a Pro Bowl sack leader (Burgess), and a Hall of Fame tackle passing through (Warren Sapp, 19.0). In the 27 seasons of the play-by-play era, none of them got within 29 sacks of where Crosby now sits: 69.5, to Mack's 40.5. Every additional sack he records in 2026 stretches a franchise lead that already stands at 29 over a Defensive Player of the Year.
Why it matters. Franchise leaderboards usually compress at the top because stars leave in their prime, exactly what happened with Mack, traded after four and a half seasons. Crosby staying, through three head coaches and zero playoff wins, is why the gap is 29 sacks and growing. For a franchise whose identity was built on pass rushers, from the 70s teams through Long and Townsend, the play-by-play era has a clear answer for who owned the position.
The 2024 injury year read like a decline. Then 2025 produced a career high in tackles for loss.
TrendCrosby year by year (regular season)
| Season | Games | Sacks | TFL | QB hits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 17 | 12.5 | 22 | 36 |
| 2023 | 17 | 14.5 | 23 | 31 |
| 2024 | 12 | 7.5 | 17 | 20 |
| 2025 | 15 | 10.0 | 28 | 20 |
A 12-game, 7.5-sack 2024 was the first real dent in the resume, and the age-27 injury season is where edge rushers often start the slide. Instead, 2025 answered with 10 sacks and a career-high 28 tackles for loss, a 65% jump over 2024 and second in the NFL behind only Myles Garrett (33). The sack total came back to double digits; the backfield disruption came back bigger than it had ever been.
Why it matters. The shape of the rebound matters more than the raw numbers. Post-injury rushers who return diminished usually show it first in run-down burst, the TFL component, while maintaining pass-rush production on savvy. Crosby inverted that: the TFLs hit a career peak, meaning the short-area explosion is fully intact at 28. That is the specific evidence that 2024 was a health interruption, not the beginning of an aging curve.
The strip, the dip, and 2026
League-wide, one sack in eight forces a fumble. Crosby's rate: one in nineteen. The strip is the missing weapon.
AnomalyFumble rate when the QB goes down, 2019-2025 regular seasons
| Situation | Plays | Fumble rate |
|---|---|---|
| League: sack plays | 8,963 | 12.8% |
| League: all other dropbacks | 126,355 | 0.8% |
| Crosby: his 75 sack plays | 75 | 5.3% (4 fumbles) |
Sacks are where takeaways live: league-wide since 2019, 12.8% of sacks shake the ball loose, against 0.8% of other dropbacks. Crosby underperforms that number badly. Across the 75 plays on which he recorded a sack or half sack, only 4 produced a fumble, 5.3%, well under half the league rate. His 11 career forced fumbles lean on hustle plays and punch-outs as a tackler instead. Close the gap to league average and roughly five extra takeaways materialize over a span like this one.
Why it matters. This is the one genuine hole in an otherwise complete profile, and it is worth being honest about because takeaways are the pass rush's highest-value output: a strip-sack is worth several times a plain sack in expected points. The mechanics are real, some rushers arrive swiping at the ball and some arrive driving through the tackle, and Crosby is emphatically the second kind, which is also why he leads the era in TFLs. The trade has been volume for violence on the ball, and it is the single stat with the most obvious room in his game.
Only two rookies since 2000 have a four-sack game. Both games happened in the Oakland Coliseum.
RareFour-sack games by a first-year player, 2000-2025
| Season | Player | Game | Sacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Brian Orakpo (WAS) | Week 14 at Oakland | 4 |
| 2019 | Maxx Crosby (OAK) | Week 11 vs Cincinnati | 4 |
In 26 seasons, exactly two players have recorded a four-sack game in their first NFL season: Brian Orakpo in 2009 and Crosby in 2019, when he took Cincinnati apart in week 11. The strange footnote: both games were played in the Oakland Coliseum, Orakpo as the visitor, Crosby as the last great rookie performance the building's home fans got before the franchise moved to Vegas.
Why it matters. Rookie pass rushers almost never spike this hard because sacks compound experience: hand usage, rush plans, and offensive tendencies all take years to bank. A four-sack rookie game is therefore less a stat than an announcement, and in Crosby's case it was a true forecast: the fourth-rounder who did it now owns the franchise sack lead. For Orakpo it was the peak; the divergence is a reminder that even the rarest single games need the career behind them.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: rushers with his seven-year resume hit double digits in year 8 more often than not. The call: 10+ sacks in 2026.
Crosby entering year 8
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Sacks through 7 seasons | 69.5 |
| Double-digit sack seasons | 4 (2019, 2022, 2023, 2025) |
| 2025 line | 10 sacks, 28 TFL in 15 games |
| Age on Sept 1, 2026 | 29 |
Rushers drafted 2010-2017 with 55+ sacks through 7 seasons: what year 8 brought
| Cohort result | Value |
|---|---|
| Qualifying rushers | 19 |
| Average year-8 sacks | 10.3 |
| Reached 10+ in year 8 | 11 of 19 |
| Range | 1.0 (Reddick) to 19.0 (Chandler Jones) |
Nineteen rushers from the 2010-2017 drafts entered year 8 with a seven-year sack haul like Crosby's. Their eighth seasons averaged 10.3 sacks, and 11 of the 19 reached double digits, a group whose top end (Chandler Jones, 19.0; Trey Hendrickson, 17.5) came from exactly his kind of high-motor profile. Crosby arrives off a 10-sack, career-high-TFL 2025 with the burst metrics intact. The gradeable call: 10 or more sacks in 2026, which would make five double-digit seasons in eight years.
Why it matters. The cohort puts the base rate a little above even, and the tiebreakers lean his way: the 2025 TFL peak says the athleticism has not eroded, the snap share says the role will not shrink, and a Raiders team coming off 3-14 has historically been due for the kind of rebound that hands its defense more snaps with a lead, the situation where pass rushers eat. The bear case is the 2024 injury recurring or age arriving on schedule at 29; the cohort's misses (Reddick, Judon, Ngakoue) were mostly role and injury stories, not talent cliffs.
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