Terry McLaurin’s Story Isn’t Over

1. For years, bye weeks have been great opportunities for us to dive back into Sunday family schedules that the NFL might otherwise keep us from. Some years, it's a quick break from a playoff race. Other years (perhaps more often), the bye week has been a welcome respite from a rough stretch of Washington football. Since watching Commanders football on Sundays is technically our staff's job, the bye week allows us to stray a little further from our screens and be a little more locked in on the home front.

That is made even easier when only one NFC East team is on the docket—the Houston Texans hosted the New York Giants. DeMeco Ryans and the Texans defense were getting served up an inexperienced J.J. McCarthy and were ecstatic to welcome Tank Dell back to the field on offense. What followed was a miserable effort by Houston, and they lost a game they should have won—which hurts us.

An overtime Giants win gives New York four wins, twice as many as both Dallas and Philly. The NFC East is sooooooo up for grabs, but we do need the rest of the league to do its job. With the Cowboys and the Eagles playing each other this evening, we will fall two wins behind second place in the division. Unless...(a tie would be absolutely thrilling).

A great-weather weekend in the DMV made it a winning bye week for us locals, but two out of three divisional rivals getting wins was one of the worst-case scenarios on the gridiron. And we needed a winning weekend because...

2. This space often becomes a home for extolling the virtues of current and former players whom we as a fanbase have loved and cheered for over the years. Man...Terry McLaurin more than fits that bill. Seeing him go down for the season—which was clear from the moment the injury occurred—was gut-wrenching.

Thankfully, we were all spared having to watch Laremy Tunsil get carted off a field on game day. In even better news, he is actually a player we might get back during the season. We weren't as lucky with Leo Chenal and Jaylin Lane, both of whom left the field of play on four wheels. Both will remain unavailable for the remainder of the season. Johnny Newton, Javontae Jean-Baptiste, and Jacory Croskey-Merritt are all expected to return in Week 11, while both Marcus Mariota and Javon Kinlaw are expected back imminently.

As for Terry...the news was obviously much worse. Watching him on the ground moved me to silence and immediate fan reflection. This was not an injury like any of the ones listed above. Losing a cornerstone left tackle is about as bad as it gets in the NFL. Losing a franchise signal-caller is, of course, worse, but when your left tackle is one of the best in the business, there is no replacement on the roster.

As good as Tunsil is, we didn't draft him, and he didn't prove his league worthiness in the burgundy and gold. Terry McLaurin is the latest in a long line of Washington Redskins who have become beloved to the fanbase through their Herculean efforts on the field throughout their careers. Seeing our 31-year-old captain on the ground and getting carted off sparked immediate introspection.

3. Terry is No. 5 on the all-time list of Washington career receiving yards leaders. Art Monk, Charley Taylor, Gary Clark, and Santana Moss are the only players ahead of him. With him next on the list, it is a perfect group of players for Terry to be a part of—every one of these guys is absolutely cherished by the fanbase.

Art's 12,026 yards were already going to be hard for Terry to chase, given that he is sitting on 7,191 receiving yards. Even including his abbreviated 2025 campaign, though, Terry's 17-game average receiving yards total is 1,091, meaning he was probably pretty confident he could make a run at Charley Taylor's No. 2 spot during his current contract term. He is less than 2,000 yards away from Taylor's 9,110 yards.

He could have leapfrogged Santana Moss this season had he stayed on pace—he only needed a little more than 900 receiving yards this season to do that. Averaging just about 80 catches a year, he would have also likely fought his way into the top two for catches.

I know you don't need me to sell you on the burgundy and gold greatness that has been Terry McLaurin's career, but the numbers pile up and tell a story that we have to keep on top of, despite the shit pile that has been our season so far.

4. Drafted in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft, Terry was introduced to us as a hard worker slated to star on special teams. We had already taken Dwayne Haskins (RIP), Terry's teammate at Ohio State, and we were told that Haskins strongly advocated for McLaurin's work ethic.

That was it—we really saw next to nothing in the preseason, which led us all to believe that our third-round receiver was like most third-round receivers: a work in progress. Then he had five catches for 125 yards and a touchdown in Week 1 (against the Eagles) en route to a very solid rookie season.

We went 3-13 that year, forcing us to find anything that floated to keep us from drowning. Terry's season was exactly that—a bright spot in a sea of terribleness. Ever since then, he has been a player who has given us hope before seasons, confidence on game days, and trust in each route he ran.

Almost 70% of his career receptions have resulted in first downs. His best year arguably came in 2024, when he quickly got in sync with rookie Jayden Daniels to help lead our team to the NFC Championship Game. Terry was second-team All-Pro that year—of his 82 receptions, 79 resulted in either a first down or touchdown.

He has been a reliable presence in the lineup and has produced at an elite level. Injuries have hampered his last two years, but that doesn't change how we got here.

5. Simply put, Terry is a Ring of Honor Redskin/Commander. If he never plays another game for us, his name and number belong in the new stadium. I'm not saying we should retire No. 17, but I would expect that jersey to get tucked away in the equipment manager's closet for a few seasons.

Seeing him carted off was as hard as any time I have watched the cart come out, and I was stuck in that moment until the second half of the 49ers game got interesting.

Part of the promise of this season was having Jayden and Terry healthy and on the field together. I suppose it would be fair to remember that we didn't start 6-0 with these two on the field, but there is a lot of season left.

6. Before the season even started, there was talk about this being Terry's last season in Washington. His three-year, $97M contract set up an out for the team after this season, allowing the Commanders to use a June 1 designation and recoup considerable cap space for next year (as much as $25M, according to Spotrac).

That is a lot of money, of course, but as I have said on Tuesday nights, if he was healthy and playing well, Terry McLaurin would have been worth keeping around. I mean, we basically pocketed that much for the 2026 season—Spotrac has us with $25M of available cap space right now.

Assuming Jayden and Terry were clicking, we would be asking Terry to continue his assault on the top of our career receiving list. I know I get overly sentimental about football, and that can result in wrong-headed decision-making.

Further, the injury he sustained (a torn patellar tendon) is very, very no bueno. The expected timetable for Terry's return to the field is probably around 10–11 months, based on the historical average of almost 50 previous NFL patellar tendon tears. This means that contract decisions will be made long before he is cleared to practice fully.

I fully expect Adam Peters to leave the door open for Terry to return to Washington, but it is hard to believe that it wouldn't be on a different contract. The injury itself isn't career-ending, as about 60% of those aforementioned players returned to the field.

I don't know what kind of miracle it would take for Terry to beat the odds in terms of his ability to produce at a high level again, but I do know that for that miracle to happen, it will take an insane amount of work. Terry excels at that part of the business, and nobody knows that better than our front office.

Not for nothing, but our wide receiver room is pretty freaking low on dudes. Even if we dip into the allegedly deep upcoming wide receiver class in the draft, we will still need warm bodies to fill that room. From reclamation projects like Treylon Burks to young receivers still on valuable rookie deals like Luke McCaffrey, we have kept some guys in that position group whom I believe Terry can unseat in an open competition.

His biggest problem is that he likely won't be healthy enough to compete against those guys in camp.

Therefore, here is my prediction: Terry plays for the Washington Commanders again. I'm not sure there will be a long list of teams looking to sign our guy in the middle of his rehabilitation. Unless he remains under contract (seems unlikely), he will become a free agent while still unable to walk without a limp.

That will buy us the time necessary to get comfortable with his recovery and hopefully allow us to remain at the top of his preferred destination list. He will come back in a shroud of mystery, and we won't see any progress in training camp.

Instead, the first time he suits up again for us, he will be a bit of an unknown quantity (you see where this is going, right?). Just like he entered the league, he will once again find himself off the radar.

I just can't imagine an ineffective version of Terry McLaurin. Some players are built to handle and overcome adversity better than others, and No. 17 strikes me as one of those players.

This is about as tough as it gets for skill players to beat, but it says here that Terry McLaurin will move up that all-time Commanders list before he hangs 'em up for good.