HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — Maxx Crosby went through a full-team practice on Wednesday for the first time since December, and everyone on the Raiders seemed keenly aware of that.
Las Vegas coach Klink Kubiak and defensive coordinator Rob Leonard let Crosby — who doesn't seem to know any speed other than fast — know that the quarterbacks wear no-contact red for a reason. Crosby said coaches all the way back to his days at Eastern Michigan warned him to leave the QBs alone and that he was regularly kicked out of practices even then.
New Raiders quarterback Kirk Cousins is well aware of Crosby's reputation.
“I’m just a little bit nervous that he’s got to respect the red jersey these next few weeks, so I’ll try to make sure that happens,” Cousins said.
All in all, the Raiders will take this version of Crosby rather than one who spent the previous six months recovering from knee surgery in January and the arduous recovery that ensued. Crosby said he couldn't bend his left knee for two months and had difficulty sleeping, relying heavily on his wife, Rachel, to assist him with common physical tasks.
Now that he's back, the Raiders are counting on Crosby to return to the form that made him one of the NFL's best pass rushers, someone who brings an edge and routinely throws off opposing offensive game plans. If Wednesday's practice was any indication, Crosby indeed looked back.
He is a five-time Pro Bowler and has made first- or second-team All-Pro three times. Since his rookie year in 2019, Crosby is first in the league with 133 tackles for loss, sixth with 69 1/2 sacks and fifth with 164 quarterback hits.
Crosby was so fired up to get back on the practice field that he joined the rookies when they reported last Thursday.
“I was actually really excited about that just so I could get a head start on the vets,” Crosby said. "I didn’t have any OTA reps. I haven’t played football since literally last year, so I was excited to get back in the building and kind of get warmed up again, get back out there. I did a walk-through on Friday with all the rookies and doing all the workouts and stuff with the rookies, so I felt like a rookie again, which was a little weird, but it was awesome.”
Crosby said he also was excited to remain in Las Vegas, which didn't appear possible when the Raiders traded him to Baltimore in March. Just four days later, however, the Ravens backed out of the deal, sending Crosby back to Las Vegas.
He initially was angry, but quickly rededicated himself to excelling for the Raiders.
“It’s been a long offseason, but it’s a blessing in disguise," Crosby said. "There’s a lot of things that I learned and grew from, and that’s the beautiful thing about life. You have an opportunity every day to either feel bad for yourself and make excuses and be a victim, or you can stand up and rise and build and grow from those types of experiences. I feel like that’s what has built who I am and I try to inspire the people around me.”
That includes Cousins, a veteran of 14 NFL seasons with his own standout resume that includes four Pro Bowl invitations.
He didn't know what to expect from Crosby after signing with the Raiders and was impressed new teammate consistently arrives at the team facility early, setting the tone by the way he approaches the day.
“It’s not by accident that he’s an All-Pro level player,” Cousins said. “I just feel like he relates well to everybody. He’s not aloof, he’s hardworking, he wants to be here, wants to be engaged, brings positive attitude every day.”
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 pick in this year's draft, ran the third-team offense in organized team activities and minicamp.
But when the team reassembled for training camp, Mendoza had moved ahead of Aidan O'Connell to guide the second unit while Cousins handled the starters.
Offensive coordinator Andrew Janocko said Mendoza has progressed in a number of areas.
“Just the command of the offense, him being able to articulate things, how he sees it,” Janocko said. "He sees it in real time, takes it from the meeting room and on the board in the film, brings it out here and is able to see the picture. Then tie his footwork to that.”
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Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby (98) speaks during a news conference at the team's NFL football training camp, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/Lucas Peltier)
Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby (98) warms up during practice at the team's NFL football training camp, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/Lucas Peltier)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The stop-start fighting between the United States and Iran appears to have entered a new phase as Saudi Arabia has publicly joined military escalations against Tehran-backed proxies. At the same time, an already untenable diplomatic effort to end the war has faltered once again as mistrust deepens between the longtime adversaries.
Despite several days of relative calm, both sides carried out military strikes in the last 24 hours that once again risk a return to all-out war — and further expansion in the region — while little is clear about what strategy, if any, American or Iranian officials have for a path forward.
While President Donald Trump and his allies have spent recent days arguing that Iran is begging to return to the negotiating table, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Tuesday that his country has made no requests to restart the diplomatic track in more than two weeks.
Following a thwarted attack on the U.S. base in Jordan, Trump turned back to threats Wednesday even while sustaining the prospect of continued talks.
“They’ve already apologized, but, you know, we got to smack them a little bit,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. He added: “It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point. But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
Hours later, the strikes followed as the U.S. military said it launched a “a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces based in the Middle East” in a social media post. It did not immediately disclose the targets of the attack.
There's a sense of déjà vu as the Republican president has vacillated for the past several months between insisting a deal was near to end the war and Tehran's nuclear program and then using vulgarities and threats to get Iran to capitulate to U.S. demands — to no avail.
The stakes for continued U.S. military action have never been higher for Trump and his party as the conflict, unpopular among many Americans, has jolted the world economy just months before critical midterm elections in November. The renewed fighting also has killed and injured more American troops and been complicated by concerns that the U.S. is further drawing down stockpiles of key air defense systems needed to defend its bases and allies.
In the past day, Iran said it fired ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a key U.S. military hub for the region, which Trump said were intercepted. And Saudi Arabia joined the U.S. in striking multiple logistics and weapons sites used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
The first publicly announced joint U.S.-Saudi strikes followed drone attacks on the kingdom, complicating a conflict that now includes nearly every country in the region. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive military operations, said the two attacks were not connected.
Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman met separately Wednesday with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly about the private meeting.
The defense minister conveyed the view of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto leader, that Iran has lost leverage in Syria and Lebanon but is still managing to provide support to the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq, according to one of person familiar with Prince Khalid’s talks with Trump and Vance.
The Iran-aligned Houthi group earlier this week said it fired ballistic missiles at a Saudi oil tanker, days after declaring it was imposing a naval blockade on Saudi vessels in the Red Sea.
The Saudi decision to join the U.S. attacks against the Iraqi militias was meant to send a message to Iran that it wouldn’t tolerate Iran or its proxies targeting the Saudi oil industry and other critical infrastructure, the person added.
At the same time, the defense minister underscored to Trump and Vance that the Saudis want to see a de-escalation in the war and want Washington and Tehran to return to negotiations.
Drone strikes also ignited fires on two natural gas vessels at a port in Egypt, a close U.S. ally and regional mediator that is one of the only countries in the Middle East to have been spared from direct military action during the war. A strike by Iran or its allies, if confirmed, would mark a significant widening of the conflict.
The U.S.-Saudi strikes came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed his first meeting with Trump since they launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28.
An Israeli official briefed on the meeting Tuesday at the White House said Netanyahu assured Trump that it is the U.S., not Israel, that is in the driver's seat with Iran, attempting to push back on the notion that he’s increasingly out of step with his closest ally on the way ahead.
Yet, Israeli officials also have privately expressed concern that Trump, with midterm elections looming, is trying to “keep this war on a low flame,” according to a person familiar with Netanyahu's government’s internal deliberations. The person and the Israeli official were not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The person added that Israeli officials have become increasingly concerned about Trump’s sensitivity to surging oil prices as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to global energy shipments and about the growing trepidation among some in the U.S. administration about the burn rate of critical missile interceptors.
The recent fighting with Iran used up more of the U.S. military’s already diminished stockpiles of Patriot and THAAD interceptors, potentially putting American troops at more risk if hostilities resume, according to an analysis released this week from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Trump that the state of the munitions stockpile could have an impact on military operations in Iran, according to another U.S. official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, said the message was delivered as part of Caine’s regular duties of providing military advice and options to Trump.
The Trump administration does not seem to have a strategy to resume negotiations with Iran over ending the conflict.
Despite efforts by some mediators to get talks restarted — or at least find a point at which they could begin again — the administration is not actively pursuing talks at the moment, a senior U.S. official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the latest developments in the region suggested that any resumption in direct diplomacy was not imminent.
Analysts called the uncertainty and lack of strategy a result of deep, growing mistrust between Washington and Tehran, especially after an interim ceasefire proposal signed in mid-June collapsed in recent weeks.
Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said senior Iranian officials were nearly unanimous in their decision to approve that memorandum of understanding with the U.S.
“But now none of them believe that Trump is a reliable negotiating partner,” he said. "The problem, I think, is that Trump also has now the same impression about the Iranians."
In some respects, the on-again, off-again nature of talks and back-and-forth military attacks should not be surprising.
The history of U.S. negotiations with Iran after 1979 is littered with failure, false starts and stops, and military actions that have nonetheless stopped short of the kind of conflict the two countries are now in.
Despite its flaws, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran secured by the Obama administration was the first major agreement between the two countries since the Algiers Accords in 1981 that ended the American hostage crisis and laid a patchwork path for the resolution of other issues, including the unfreezing of Shah-era Iranian assets seized by the U.S. after the Islamic Revolution.
However, even from the beginning, both sides accused each other of violating the terms of these deals.
Accusations of violations of the Algiers Accords, which led to a period of great animosity, including U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, became the norm.
Despite the semi-rapprochement around the 2015 nuclear deal, Trump’s withdrawal from it in 2018 during his first term, his imposition of a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Tehran, and the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top military leader Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, sent the relationship to new lows.
Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, speaks to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, before the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Tuesday July 28, 2026, at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump attend the dignified transfer of four U.S. service members recently killed in the Middle East, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
