The 5 O’Clock Club: Why is it taking so long for the Laremy Tunsil trade to be announced?

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…

The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.

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I know a lot of people get irritated by Tweets and articles that say “officially official” to announce that something we’ve all known about for a long time has finally and officially happened. It’s common in the NFL offseason to hear about a trade as early as February and then have to wait until mid-March to finally be told it’s official. For example, here in Washington, the 2022 trade for Carson Wentz was publicly reported a week before the transaction could be finalized and announced. This offseason, the Deebo Samuel trade became public on March 1st, but the two teams involved had to wait until the 12th to announce the trade officially.

There’s a good reason for waiting. Most Washington fans will recall that not so long ago, JD McKissic agreed to terms with the Buffalo Bills during the free agent negotiation period, but then reconsidered and re-signed with the newly-minted Commanders for the 2022 season. The Bills would have jumped the gun if they had announced the deal before it was signed. NFL teams have to wait for things to become “officially official” before they announce them.

If you visit the Commanders team X/Twitter feed today, you’ll see a ton of official announcements for transactions ranging from extending Michael Deiter to trading for Deebo.

What you won’t find is an announcement of the acquisition by trade of left tackle Laremy Tunsil.

On the team website, the Commanders have a page set up where fans can track the progress of the team’s 2025 offseason roster building. On that page, there is no announcement from the team about the trade for Laremy Tunsil; instead, this is what it says about the reported transaction:

The Commanders wanted to address the offensive line to protect Daniels this offseason, and they have reportedly done so by acquiring one of the best left tackles in football. ESPN’s Schefter reported that the Texans are trading Laremy Tunsil to the Commanders for draft compensation.

Yep. The team’s own website is citing reporting from ESPN to let fans know about the Tunsil trade, which the Commanders are not allowed to talk about publicly until the deal is finalized.

The trade for Laremy Tunsil was first reported on March 10th — which happened to be the first day of the NFL’s “legal tampering period”. The trade didn’t need to remain unofficial for long since the start of the new league year was March 12th. In fact, that’s when the Commanders announced the Deebo Samual trade.

All week long, we’ve seen photos of players signing contracts and media sessions with local reporters for many new and returning players.

What we haven’t seen is any official mention of Laremy Tunsil. I wonder why that is.

At this point, you may be thinking that I’m about to expound some crazy conspiracy theory, but I’m not.

I don’t think the trade is a hoax or that it is in trouble. First of all, the team wouldn’t refer to the trade on its own website if it wasn’t really happening, and both local and national reporters would have heard rumblings if the deal were in any danger of not being completed. Secondly, until the trade happens, there is no salary cap charge for Laremy Tunsil’s $21.3m cap hit, which means that as long as the deal is unconsummated, the Commanders should remain flush with available cap space. But they just re-worked Andrew Wylie’s contract to open up some extra 2025 cap space. Without the Tunsil trade, that simply wouldn’t be necessary.

If I’m so confident the trade continues to be on firm footing, why am I even talking about this?

I still can’t help but wonder why this trade hasn’t been yet been consummated. After all, based on contract value alone, this is the biggest deal of the Commanders offseason.

Unless Laremy Tunsil went out of the country on a holiday with his family, the logistics of completing the deal should be fairly straightforward.

That makes me think that the holdup has to do with Tunsil’s contract. He is currently set to make $42.7m, split exactly evenly over the next two seasons.

Now, Tunsil’s latest contract with the Texans, which included these two years, paid him $25m per year. 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 that money listed above is that the Texans have to absorb it into their cap charges while the Commanders take on only the $42.7m in cash that hasn’t yet been paid on that contract.

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

I’m pretty sure that the reason we haven’t heard an official announcement about the Tunsil trade from the Texans or Commanders is that Laremy Tunsil want to leverage the situation to get a new contract in place with Adam Peters before all parties sign off on the trade.

My guess is that, when the trade finally becomes “officially official”, it will be accompanied by an announcement that Tunsil’s contract has been extended to become a 4- or 5-year deal with additional signing bonus, additional guaranteed money, and probably a much lower cap hit for 2025.

If so, this would represent the first major long-term commitment to an outside free agent by the team since Adam Peters’ arrival in Washington. The only other deal of this type was Sam Cosmi’s extension, which was signed prior to the start of the ‘24 season.

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.

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.

I think Tunsil will be shooting to be the first left tackle to get at least $28m per year. Assuming the Commanders agreed to a 5-year deal, 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:

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 I don’t think it’s necessary to illustrate what that would look like.

In my mind, this is the basic framework of a contract that I think Laremy Tunsil would be trying to get signed at the time the trade is finalized to make him a Washington Commander — a deal that would make him the highest-paid left tackle in the NFL in 2025.