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It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
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Terry McLaurin’s contract situation has been a topic of discussion since the end of the NFC Championship game in January. While there’s been very little actual reporting, there has been some rumor and tons of speculation that has revolved mostly around the value and length of the contract, and how those factors would compare to other NFL receivers.
This week, Adam Schefter spoke definitively enough on the Pat McAfee Show about Terry and the Commanders that it at least felt like a ‘report’ from a nationally known NFL “insider”.
Here’s what he had to say:
Schefter: “There is quite a gap between what both sides want right now and they have not made any progress.”
He discusses the fact that Mike Evans is on a $24m per year contract and implies that the Commanders might be relying on that figure in the negotiations, but Schefter doesn’t really offer any specifics beyond this hint about annual contract value.
Like nearly everyone else who has discussed the McLaurin contract publicly, Schefter seems short on specifics but very clear about one thing: he has a lot of confidence that the deal will get done.
Schefter: “I cannot envision the Commanders moving on from [McLaurin] no matter how disgruntled he may be. You can’t imagine that these two sides, as far apart as they are today, wouldn’t be able to somehow find a way to bridge their differences and figure out a solution. But, today, McLaurin and the Commanders are not close.”
Last month, I wasn’t pleased to hear Terry described as being “frustrated”. Schefter now uses the word “disgruntled” to describe McLaurin, which sounds worse.
His use of phrases like “quite a gap”, “as far apart as they are today”, and “not close” all feel like red flags on a deal that observers have mostly said should get signed by the time veterans report to Commanders training camp, which July 22, just three weeks away.
It all sounds rather grim, but then, media reports sounded pretty grim before he signed his last extension in July, 2022.
When he finally signed that deal and talked publicly about the process, he sounded like the process itself had taken a toll on him, but that he felt good about the final result:
Terry talked about the process of negotiation, saying that Ron Rivera had reached out to him to say how important it was to the team to reach an agreement. He said that Jon Allen and Logan Thomas, who have both been through the process of signing extensions, talked to him often and helped him maintain perspective. He praised his agent...
