Terry McLaurin deal locks in new Commanders identity under Josh Harris

Trent Williams. Brandon Scherff. Jonathan Allen. Ryan Kerrigan. How many of the Washington Commanders’ best players over the last 25 years did not end their careers with the team?

There is no guarantee that Terry McLaurin will finish his career in Washington. But with the extension he just signed, that just became a much more realistic scenario.

Under the ownership of Dan Snyder, Washington excelled at making a big splash. Winning the offseason. Under Josh Harris, things appear to have changed. Now, most of the soap operas have been ceded to the rival Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones. The Commanders are finally being run by savvy, adult businessmen.

Commanders are handling business differently under Adam Peters and Josh Harris

The McLaurin saga certainly had its share of handwringing and teeth gnashing. However, it’s important to recognize what did not happen as much as what did.

This never turned ugly. Sure, there was a testy quote here and there, but it could have been so much worse. McLaurin is a classy man and clearly wanted a positive outcome. We can now say the same about general manager Adam Peters.

Did you ever read an anonymous quote coming from a team “source” badmouthing McLaurin or his representatives? That was de rigueur under previous ownership. Leaks. Unnamed sources. Rumors. It happened every time things got contentious.

That type of disease is hard to eradicate. The franchise treated Williams so shabbily that even the arrival of Ron Rivera could not placate him. Allen was so worn down by trying to be the locker room leader of a dysfunctional franchise that he couldn’t recalibrate when new ownership arrived to right the ship.

Scherff was franchise-tagged for two straight seasons before getting out of town. So was Kirk Cousins. Double franchising a player is about as sure a sign of dysfunction as you will find in the NFL. It rarely happens because it is an extraordinarily punitive way to build a roster. It happened twice in the last decade under Snyder.

Peters — we can assume with the blessing of majority owner Josh Harris — remained tough in his negotiations with McLaurin. But in the end, he got a deal done.

There will be no franchise tag. There will be no disruption to the offense. Contract details are not fully available yet, but we know that Harris will be paying McLaurin fair market value for a receiver of his stature. We can also safely assume that Peters has built in some downstream protections for the club if the player's performance diminishes toward the end of the contract.

That is exactly what is supposed to happen, but what so rarely did happen in the previous quarter-century. A fair price. A club staying ahead of the curve rather than playing catch-up. And things never turned ugly.

If this is indeed a preview of how things will be handled from this point on, it should leave fans very optimistic. Laremy Tunsil will be due an extension. Frankie Luvu will be in line for another contract. Those are all preludes to the big Jayden Daniels negotiations that are coming a few years down the road.

Any or all of the coming negotiations may be long and drawn out. They may even get a bit testy. But all Commanders' fans should be confident that they will be handled professionally, and most importantly, that the team will work out deals with their very best players.

The McLaurin deal was the first major test for the Harris-Peters regime. They passed the test with room to spare.

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