The Commanders’ star receiver acknowledged Tuesday that his holdout affected young quarterback Jayden Daniels.
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Terry McLaurin stood outside the Washington Commanders practice facility Tuesday, talking about regret.
A year has passed since the Commanders’ top wide receiver began the holdout that seemed to send the team into a free-fall from which it never recovered. While he eventually got a three-year contract extension worth $98 million, his season was filled with injuries and disappointment, and he may have even stained his reputation as a rare kind of selfless football star.
So when McLaurin was asked Tuesday whether missing offseason practices and training camp while fighting for a new deal last year had a bigger impact than he expected, he quickly nodded.
“I can answer that honestly,” he said. “Missing that time, I think, with a young quarterback is extremely important, because although I was going into year seven, [quarterback] Jayden [Daniels] was going into year two. And our connection is extremely important to build during this time.”
The Commanders have talked a lot this spring about fresh starts. They use words such as “pacing” and “energy,” and they say the past few weeks of offseason team activities have been an encouraging sign that the team is more together and focused — and ready to run away from last year’s 5-12 nightmare.
A big part of that optimism is the fact that McLaurin is here.
“There’s certain cornerstone people like Terry that have these standards, whether it’s practice, workouts, the meeting. You can feel all the energy that [they] bring to everybody,” Commanders Coach Dan Quinn said. “He’s off to a hell of a start here.”
But last year isn’t far away, and in his first news conference since last season ended, McLaurin made clear he hasn’t forgotten.
“I grew a lot from that situation,” he said. “I learned a lot.”
He was asked what he had learned.
“The NFL is a business, and when you get to a certain part of your career, that starts to show itself,” he said. “But at the same time, you can’t necessarily control a lot of things on the business side of it.”
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“It was just something that had to happen,” he added. “I don’t look at things that are adversity in your life as a negative thing, like I used to.”
On the field, McLaurin has been dazzling. He says his body feels as good as it has in years, and he looks more like the rookie third-round draft pick who stunned everyone in minicamp and training camp back in 2019 and quickly made himself Washington’s No. 1 wide receiver before the first game.
He talked about the offense of new coordinator David Blough, specifically how Blough is moving him to both sides of the field, creating more options for him and the rest of the receivers. McLaurin said he really appreciates that the new system has several options that start the same but end with him going in different directions. He said it will be difficult for defensive backs to know which way he’s running.
“That forces them to have to communicate more,” McLaurin said. “It forces them to have to be able to study my route stems and in lining up, where I’m lining up, and versus just being able to know, like, ‘Hey, we know [McLaurin] is going to be on the left side, we can shift our defense and play it to that.’”
Almost as an example, McLaurin blew past a defensive back in Tuesday’s practice, racing wide open down the field, the closest defender more than 10 yards behind him. Daniels leaned back and threw. Too far. An easy touchdown instead became a blown big play. McLaurin watched the ball roll through the end zone and slowly walked back upfield.
“We just barely missed [that] play,” McLaurin later said.
McLaurin found Daniels, and the two talked. McLaurin appeared to explain the way the defender had not properly covered him, allowing the route to be open. Daniels nodded, and practice went on.
“We’ve been able to hit the ground running, and it’s allowed us to really work out a lot of early kinks, and we’re connecting on a lot of plays early,” McLaurin said.
Something they never got to do last spring, in what became a lost season for all of them.
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