Just paying Terry might not be as simple as it seems
The hot topic at the top of everyone’s minds during training camp has been Terry McLaurin’s contract situation. That is surprising, given that Terry is under contract and has a $25.5M cap hit with the Washington Commanders this season.
It is also disappointing, because it means the camp battles with the most potential impact on the coming season (DE, WR, RB, OL, S) are not getting the attention they normally would.
Terry has made it known that he expects to be paid like a top wide receiver. What that means, in terms of contract value and guaranteed money has not been disclosed by any verified source. According to Over the Cap, the highest paid wide receiver is 25 year old Ja’Marr Chase, at $40.25M Average Per Year (APY). The median APY of the top five WR contracts is $34M APY. And the median of the top 10 contracts is $32.25M APY. He is probably expecting something somewhere in that range.
We don’t know anything about what offers either side has made. What has been made clear is that the Commanders have not come close to Terry’s asking price. While the team has been playing it cool, Terry has expressed increasing frustration to the media. Most recently, he has requested a trade.
At 30 years of age, this season, Terry is set to be the 17th highest paid NFL WR by total contract APY. There are myriad ways to look at contract value, but that’s a good starting point. Terry’s salary rank is somewhat below his rank by production at WR. In the 2024 regular season, he ranked 12th in total receiving yards, 2nd in TD receptions, and 8th in both yards/target and Receiving Success Rate. Based on his relative productivity in 2024, and his value to the Commanders as well as their competitors, it is clear why Terry feels he is due for a pay raise in his next contract.
If Terry were 27 years old, as he was when his current contract was negotiated, that would be a no brainer. The challenge Adam Peters faces is managing the risk and achieving optimal value for the team when extending a wide receiver who will be 31 years old in the first season of his next contract.
To many in the fanbase, it is simple. Terry is a franchise player, who embodies the winning culture that new ownership and management is building in DC. He epitomizes the clutch playstyle that is rapidly becoming the Quinn Commanders’ signature. He is a team leader and provides a role model for younger players. And most of all, he has earned it by playing at a top level consistently, through the dark period under Dan Snyder, despite never having a top QB until last season. If any player has earned a big pay check, it’s Terry McLaurin.
The problem, as others have pointed out, is that despite Terry’s undisputed contributions to this point in his career, wide receivers usually experience a drop off in output right around the age of 30. The contract extension that is being discussed would either rework Terry’s salary for 2025, or it would commence in 2026. Assuming it will be at least a two year extension from 2026, it will be paying Terry to play at ages 31, 32 and possibly beyond.
Wide receivers have had productive careers well into their thirties. Jerry Rice led the NFL in receiving yards at age 33 and had an All-Pro season with over 1,200 receiving yards at age 40. Washington’s own Art Monk tallied 1,049 receiving yards and 8 TDs at 34 years young in the team’s last Super Bowl season. But are those two Hall of Fame careers a reasonable basis for setting contract values for Terry’s extension? Is that kind of longevity at the position normal, or were Rice and Monk outliers?
Deciding on a reasonable price point for a 31 year old WR is where things get contentious. It has been suggested that the Commanders are using Mike Evans’ contract as a starting point ($29M guaranteed; 2024: $5.6M; 2025: $25.4M; 2026: $13.1M). I am not aware of any confirmation from a verified source that that’s true. But since Evans was 31 in year 1, it’s not an unreasonable starting point for discussion.
If the Commanders are holding to figures below $30M APY and $30M guaranteed money, are they low-balling Terry? Does he deserve to be paid in the range of $32-40M per year when he turns 31, and should the Commanders pay him?
Everyone wants to keep Terry on the roster. What the team needs to know is, if they pay him top WR money, how likely is he to continue to produce at top WR level throughout the extension contract.
To get a handle on that, I searched the Pro Football Reference for WRs who have had 1,000+ receiving yard seasons past the age of 30 over the past decade. In 2021, the NFL extended the regular season to 17 games. So I used 941 receiving yards as the benchmark from 2015 through 2020, which is equivalent to 1,000 yards in a 17-game season. A 1,000 yd season is not a top 10 mark in today’s game. In 2024, WR10 posted 1,130 receiving yards, and 21 WRs went over 1,000. What the 1,000 yd figure does is set the level below which a top 10 contract begins to look like a significant overpay.
I also added data on players cap hits relative to the NFL salary cap in their 1,000 year season. Since the question of QBs throwing to Terry always comes up, I also included the QBs each WR played with and their league ranks by ESPN’s total QBR. Terry’s 2024 age 29 stats are added for comparison.
In the decade from 2015 to 2024, there were 171 player-seasons recorded by WRs over the age of 30. Out of 171 player-seasons, only the 13 shown in the table featured receiving totals equivalent to 1,000 yards in a 17 game season. In other words, only 7.6% of NFL WRs playing past Terry’s current age posted 1,000+ yard seasons, or the pre-2021 equivalent.
Interestingly, lowering the age cutoff by just one year to 30 doubled the number of player-seasons to 26. That is a reflection of the steep fall off-of WR production right around Terry’s current age which we have heard about. Of course, Terry could be one of the exceptional WRs, who continues to produce through his early thirties. But a rational decision maker will focus on the most likely outcome, rather than hoping that his player will be one of the outliers.
If the Commanders commit to paying Terry top WR money, they should expect to receive top receiving production for the duration of the contract. If they are discussing a three-year extension, starting when his current contract ends, that would require Terry to continue producing at his current level or better to age 33.
In the past decade, only three WRs have produced 1,000+ yard seasons at age 33 or older. Only one of those did so for three years past the age of 30: the Cardinals’ Larry Fitzgerald. Only Fitzgerald and Davante Adams managed to produce more than one 1,000+ receiving yard season in that timespan.
So, extending Terry on top WR money for two or three seasons beyond his current contract would be betting on a once or twice a decade outcome. No matter how productive Terry has been up to now, the chance of him maintaining that productivity for even a single season past the end of his current contract is very low, based on the recent history of players at his position.
What’s That All Mean for the Contract Negotiation?
The forgoing begs the question, how much would be too much to pay Terry?
It would be ideal if we knew how much Terry was demanding. But we don’t, so instead, let’s take a look at three figures which have come up in discussions.
It has been rumored that Terry is demanding to be paid like Justin Jefferson. Jefferson is a 26 year old, four-time All-Pro/Pro Bowler and has topped 1,400 receiving yards in 4/5 NFL seasons. Terry has never come close to those numbers, even when receiving from a top 5 QB in 2024. It would take a miracle for Terry to kick his production up to Jefferson’s level at age 31. Jefferson represents the cap of what an overpay would look like at $35M APY. His average salary represents 12.5% of the 2025 salary cap.
In his best NFL seasons, Terry has placed in the bottom half of the top 10 in most receiving stats. Thinking optimistically, if he can keep that up at age 31, he would warrant a top 10 salary. The median value of the top 10 WR salaries is $32.25M. But that’s a little rich, since it falls between the WR5 and WR6, levels that Terry hasn’t reached consistently.
A more appropriate benchmark would be the 10th highest paid WR: Tee Higgins, $28.75 APY. Higgins’ receiving totals don’t match Terry’s, but he is WR2 on team with Ja’Marr Chase, and he is just 26 YO. The Bengals might be optimistic in banking on an uptick in production during the extension. But their optimism is more or less equivalent to the Commanders hoping that Terry can maintain his current productivity past 30. The APY of his contract represents 10.3% of the 2025 salary cap.
Rounding up the rear is Mike Evans. We have heard that the Commanders are basing their offers on Evans’ contract, which has been decried by “Pay Terry” proponents as low balling. Evans is a six time Pro Bowler and two-time AP2, including in 2023, when he led the league in TD receptions at age 30, the season before his current extension. He has topped 1,200 receiving yards four times, most recently in 2023. He signed a two year, $20.5M APY extension at age 31 last season, with a peak cap hit of $25.35 in 2025. His 2025 cap hit represents 8.96% of the salary cap.
Of the three contracts, Evans’ is the most directly relevant to Terry’s, since it was signed at the age that Terry’s extension is set to start. Evans is coincidentally one of the ten WRs to have a 1,000+ yd receiving season past the age of 30 in the past decade. If Terry deserves a bonus check for past service to the franchise, Evans’ $25.35M peak cap hit would represent a reasonable starting point for the first year of an extension. The salary cap has averaged an annual increase of 11.25% over the past four years, which would adjust the year one salary up to $28.2M in 2026.
How do those figures relate to the 10 WRs who topped 1,000 yards after the age of 30? To enable meaningful comparisons across the past decade, I converted the salary figures in the table to percentage of salary cap. If the Commanders were to commit to pay Terry $28M in 2026, assuming that represents 8.96% of the 2026 cap, and he rewarded their generosity with a 1,000+ yard season, he would become the second-highest paid WR over 30 to do so in the past decade, in cap-adjusted terms. The only over 30 WR to do so on a higher proportion of cap was Larry Fitzgerald in 2016 and 2017. The other nine teams to get that level of output WRs over 30 did so for 6.6% of cap or less. That equates to $20.5 if the cap rises to $310M next season, o $18.4M if it stays constant.
The peak season of Evans’ contract therefore represents a generous starting point for extending a WR at age 31. The extra $8M to $10M bonus can be considered as an adjustment for the fact that WR salaries have been rising in proportional terms. A $28M salary in 2026 will look like good value if Terry posts a season like last year at age 31. But not so much if his production starts to fall off. Anything significantly higher than $28M is essentially banking on Terry matching or exceeding the best output from WRs at his age in the past decade, and is therefore more likely than not to look like an overpay when the contract is completed.
Where to from Here?
If Terry really is demanding to be paid like young WRs who are still at peak production, the Commanders should allow him to explore trade/extension deals with other teams to allow him to test his expectations against the market. More data points could be what’s needed to get the negotiations moving in a direction for both sides to feel they have achieved appropriate value.
Those fans worried about a contract stalemate impacting the season can relax. Terry is under contract to the end of the season, and the Commanders have no incentive to pursue a trade. The only card left for Terry to play to try to force a deal would be to threaten a holdout. It’s not much of a threat though, because a holdout would undermine his goal of getting paid. Whatever Terry’s market value might be in 2026, it is unlikely that another team would pay him enough at age 31 to make up for losing his 2025 salary.
Hopefully, when all of the posturing is done, rationality will prevail with both sides recognizing it’s in their mutual interests for Terry to be extended on terms that don’t incur undue risks of overpaying him in his thirties.