Laremy Tunsil has reset the left tackle market twice in his career; should Washington make it happen a 3rd time?

Laremy Tunsil should be a cornerstone of the Commanders team for at least the next 5 years. To make that happen, he will need to be paid a lot of money.

I was listening to the most recent Bram Weinstein podcast today, and Bram’s podcast/broadcast partner, Callow, said something so quickly that it almost slipped by me unnoticed. Almost, but not quite. He said that he didn’t expect Commanders left tackle Laremy Tunsil to be on the Commanders roster beyond his current contract, which will expire at the end of the ‘26 season.

Personally, I think this is a gross misreading of the team’s intent. In my view, when Adam Peters traded for Tunsil, who will turn 31 in thee more weeks, the Commanders GM did so with the intent of locking down the left tackle position for the long-term.

Elite offensive tackles can have very long NFL careers

For comparison and context, let’s take a quick look at Trent Williams, who was traded by the Redskins to the 49ers in 2020, Williams’ age 32 season. While the career experience of one player may not be predictive of that of another, there are enough similarities between Williams and Tunsil that I think Trent’s experience can inform our opinion (to some extent, at least) of what’s possible for Tunsil.

At the time of his trade to the Niners, Trent Williams was a year older than Tunsil is now. In the subsequent five seasons, Trent has been named to 4 Pro Bowls and has been a 3-time 1st-team All Pro. Heading into his age 37 season, Williams was, this week, named the 4th best offensive tackle in the NFL by ESPN. Tunsil was ranked 7th.

It is, in fact, not particularly unusual for elite offensive tackles to play at a high level well past their age 35 season. Jason Peters played for 21 seasons, retiring at age 41, and while he played a lesser role in his final couple of seasons, he was a full time starter through his age 39 season. Andrew Whitworth earned 1st team All Pro honors in his age 34 and age 36 seasons, and was a full time starter until he retired at the end of the 2021 season at 40 years of age. His team, the Rams, won Super Bowl LVI in the final game of his career.

All of this is to say that Trent Williams, who remains elite at the position 15 years after being drafted #4 overall by the Redskins in 2010, is not some one-of-a-kind unicorn who discovered the fountain of youth. Elite offensive tackles can play long past the age when most running backs, receivers and defensive backs have lost the elite athletic ability that allowed them to thrive in the NFL.

Laremy Tunsil, of course, was drafted 13th overall by the Dolphins in the 2016 draft when he fell due to the appearance on the internet — just 10 minutes prior to the start of the draft — of a video that showed him smoking out of a gas mask bong. Most draft pundits had Tunsil ranked as the best player available in the leadup to that draft, making his fall to #13 a massive slide.

His fortunes were not permanently damaged by the draft day drama. He has been named to the Pro Bowl five times in the past six years, missing Pro Bowl honors only in 2021 when he missed 11 games due to having surgery on his thumb. Similarly, Trent Williams had been named to 7 consecutive Pro Bowls prior to missing the 2018 and 2019 seasons with the combination of a knee injury and skin cancer.

At 31 years of age, Laremy Tunsil, who has been among the best OTs in the NFL for years, should have another 5 to 9 seasons as a high-end starter, and could actually have the best years of his career ahead of him, based on the evidence of Whitworth and Williams each earning 1st team All Pro honors for the first time at age 33 or later.

Tunsil should be seen as a cornerstone player by the Commanders

Laremy Tunsil is a very good player. One indication of how good is that he was unveiled at #86 in the NFL’s Top-100 players this week — his 5th appearance on that list.

Tunsil has started all 125 games in which he has appeared and is a five-time Pro Bowler. In 2016, he earned PFWA All-Rookie Team honors.

From 2019-2024, Tunsil played for the Houston Texans where he started in 81 games and earned Pro Bowl honors in each season. In 2024, Tunsil registered an 89.1 pass block grade from PFF among all offensive tackles. He also had a pass block win rate of 93 percent on 411 total snaps, tied for the seventh best among all offensive tackles, per ESPN analytics.

Since 2022, Tunsil has earned a 91.7 pass blocking grade (second among all offensive tackles) and allowed a presser rate of 3.1 percent, the third best among all offensive tackles.

Tunsil is easily the most accomplished player on the Commanders offensvie line and instantly becomes one of Washington’s headliners on offense.

A lot has been made of the fact that Tunsil led all NFL linemen in penalties in 2024. Last season, he was penalized 19 times. According to NBC Sports, he had 12 false starts, 3 illegal formation penalties, 2 holding calls, an ineligible man downfield penalty, and an unnecessary roughness penalty.

Twelve of those penalties occurred in the first four weeks of the season, with 6 flags being thrown in Week 3 (all 3 of the season’s illegal formation penalties and 3 false starts) vs the Vikings. That points to: (1) a crew of officials out to prove a point in Wk 3 when he was hit with 32% of his season-long penalties, and (2) a player who adjusted pretty successfully from October onward, getting flagged a total of 7 times in the final 13 games.

Despite these mitigating factors, Tunsil made no excuses and took responsibility for doing better in 2025. In a video interview, Tunsil characterized the penalties he racked up last year “unacceptable” and committed to improvement in 2025.

Even with the early season penalty issues, last year, the Ole Miss product earned an 88.6 pass-blocking grade from Pro Football Focus, fourth-best among 140 tackles. He also played the 10th-most snaps among left tackles, allowed two sacks, and graded as an above-average run blocker.

Washington should expect the 6-foot-5, 313-pounder to keep up this level of play next year. Tunsil has received at least an 85.0 pass-blocking grade in five of the last six seasons, according to PFF.

A year ago, the Commanders’ left tackles struggled, collectively allowing 10 sacks and 57 pressures while Tunsil’s pass blocking stats are similar for the past three seasons combined.

It will require a significant contract extension to keep Tunsil beyond his current contract expiration at the end of 2026

Under his existing contract, Tunsil is currently set to be paid $42.7m by the Commanders, split exactly evenly over the next two seasons.

This is what the Commanders inherited — the two years that remain of Tunsil’s latest contract with the Texans that paid him $25m per year on a 3-yr, $75m contract signed a year ago. He’s actually on track to get all of that money. A lot of it is already in his bank account as part of his signing bonus. The reason you don’t see all of that money listed above is that the Texans had to absorb 100% of the signing bonus into their cap charges while the Commanders take on only the $42.7m in cash that hasn’t yet been paid yet.

This $21.3m APY is a pretty team-friendly price for a left tackle of Tunsil’s skill level, and the contract doesn’t have any guaranteed money in 2026 — which provides maximum flexibility for the Commanders, but minimal security for Tunsil.

For all these reasons, Tunsil will be looking for a contract extension — possibly before the start of the ‘25 season, but certainly before the ‘26 season. Given the nature of the NFL salary cap and its effect on player contract values, the Commanders would probably save money by extending Tunsil immediately, but the front office may want to see him play the ‘25 season before giving him the kind of money he will command if he plays well.

The expected structure of Tunsil’s extension

One of the tricky things in negotiating with Tunsil is that he does not use an agent; he represents himself. I imagine that this can make ‘tough’ negotiating a bit tricky for Adam Peters. After all, the GM will want to project positivity and a welcoming attitude at the same time he is trying to negotiate a deal that is favorable for the team, not unlike the tightrope AP walks in trying to get the best deal possible on a Terry McLaurin extension while at the same time acknowledging the massive contributions No. 17 has made to the franchise and the community since being drafted by the ‘Skins in 2019.

For his part, I think Tunsil is going to want to use this opportunity to try to become — for the third time in his career — the highest paid left tackle in the NFL. Currently, the two highest paid players at the position are Christian Darrisaw ($26m APY) and Trent Williams ($27.5m APY). Both of those contracts were signed last year.

At his introductory media session with the Washington sports media, Tunsil was asked about his contract after the trade, and if he was pushing for a new deal with his new team. He passed on the question, saying only that Adam Peters and the front office know where he stands on the question of an extension.

Personally, I think Tunsil will be shooting to be the first left tackle to get at least $28m per year, assuming no one else like Rashawn Slater (who is currently playing on the 5th-year option with the Chargers) beats him there.

If the Commanders wait until next year to extend Tunsil, I think he’ll want to top Slater, or any other OT that resets the market. If his extension doesn’t kick in until 2027, after his current deal expires, then the price will be even higher.

For the purposes of this article, instead of adding in unknown factors like the value of other players deals next year or the growth in salary cap two years hence, let’s focus on what a contract extension for Laremy Tunsil would look like if it were signed before the 2025 season begins.

Assuming the Commanders agreed to a 5-year deal (through 2029), the finalized contract would need to be for $140m, which means adding 3 years and $97.3m to the current deal.

Here’s a simplified example of what such a contract extension without void years could look like:

In this structure, I have converted about $18m of Tunsil’s 2025 salary into signing bonus and increased guaranteed money to $53m. This would increase his 2-year cash flow by about $11m, bring a huge chunk of the cash forward in time as an upfront bonus payment, and enhance his guaranteed money by $43m. The team would benefit in the latter years because the relatively mild salary cap escalation in the final 3 years of this structure should make his contract affordable under an increasing league-wide salary cap, and should also make the contract easy to restructure or extend in ‘28 or ‘29.

For his part, if Tunsil were to object to anything in this structure, it would likely be the lack of guarantees in 2027 and beyond. The team might be willing go agree to, the kind of guarantee triggers I discussed in last week’s article on McLaurin’s contract extension, but, adding those types of triggers here seems needlessly complicated for this article, which is more focused on contract value. Feel free to peruse the McLaurin article for a basic discussion of how triggered guarantees can be integrated into an NFL contract.

Of course, if the Commanders wanted to defer cap space more aggressively, they could add void years extending into 2030 and beyond with options and triggers like we’ve seen the Eagles and others use recently, but, again, I don’t think it’s necessary to illustrate what that would look like for the purposes of this article. You can refer to either of the related articles below for discussion/explanation of void years and their use in NFL contracts.

In my mind, what I’ve presented above is the basic framework of a contract that I think Laremy Tunsil would be trying to get signed prior to the season to make him a Washington Commander for the next five years — a deal that would make him the highest-paid left tackle in the NFL in 2025.

The Commanders may prefer to see what they’ve got before agreeing to an extension with Tunsil. Based on his history of successful negotiation, I suspect he’s perfectly happy to wait a year and bet on himself. After all, if he plays well, his price tag will only go up.