Are Terry McLaurin and the Commanders WRs struggling this season?

Breaking down questions surrounding Terry McLaurin and the Commanders WR group this season.

Some of the most common questions I’ve got this season have been about the Commanders wide receivers and particularly Terry McLaurin. McLaurin leads the team with 60 catches on 97 targets for 694 yards and two touchdowns so far this season, which isn’t bad but when you look at the other top receivers in the league and particularly in the division, there’s a pretty big gap between their stats and McLaurins. 

Eagles top receiver A.J. Brown has 73 catches on 105 targets for 1050 yards and seven touchdowns. Cowboys receiver CeeDee Lamb has 78 catches on 104 targets for 1066 yards and six touchdowns. Lamb is currently third in the league for receiving yards and Brown is fourth. While McLaurin has similar numbers in terms of catches and targets, his total yards rank 25th in the league. 

This has led to some fans questioning the Commanders offense and McLaurin himself. There have been some stats out there suggesting he and the Commanders receivers are struggling to separate while others say the offense isn’t forcing the ball to him often enough. There’s degrees of truth to both of those points but as always there’s more complexity to the situation. So let’s get into the details and break it all down. 

Coverage dictates targets

Something that comes up every few weeks is the lack of targets or catches for McLaurin in any given game. Surprisingly, McLaurin hasn’t yet had 100 or more receiving yards in a single game, which is obviously something people see and latch onto as a fault of the offense. However, this offense isn’t about trying to force the ball to one or two receivers. 

The Commanders have a number of weapons they are comfortable using, so the offense is designed to make use of all those threats by spreading the ball around with the hopes that rather than having Sam Howell have to focus on trying to force the ball to just Terry McLaurin or Jahan Dotson, he can just read the coverage and find whichever receiver happens to be open on that play, knowing whoever gets the ball has the talent to do something with it after the catch. 

To back that up, let’s compare the Commanders receivers stats with the Eagles receivers.

The Eagles have the bulk of their receiving yards spread across their top four targets; A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert and D’Andre Swift. Those four account for 2399 of the Eagles team total 2697 receiving yards. Brown and Smith, the top two receivers, have 1788 yards combined, which is about 66% of the total receiving yards. Clearly, the Eagles want to feed their top two receivers heavily and trust them to do the bulk of the work. 

By comparison, the Commanders top four receivers; Terry McLaurin, Curtis Samuel, Jahan Dotson and Logan Thomas, have a combined total of 1996 receiving yards, 403 yards less than the Eagles top four targets. However, when you look at the next four receivers on each team, you can see where that difference is made up and then some.

The Commanders only have three receivers with 100 yards receiving in a single game this year, Brian Robinson, Jahan Dotson and most recently Curtis Samuel against the Cowboys. However, across the season they have 10 different receivers that have passed 100 yards receiving and six that have passed 250 receiving yards for the season. This speaks to the style of offense that Eric Bieniemy is looking to run this season and why no single receiver is standing out in the offense but Howell is benefitting overall. 

What this means is that rather than Howell focusing on forcing the ball to McLaurin, he can read the coverage and let the coverage dictate which target he throws to. Here’s an example with a basic stick concept. 

In this clip we can see two examples of the same basic stick concept. On a stick concept, you have two receivers running routes, one running the stick route and one working out to the flat. On both of these plays, McLaurin is the receiver tagged with the stick route while Logan Thomas is the receiver working to the flat. 

On the first play of the clip, you can see how Howell reads the defense and spots the Falcons dropping into zone coverage. The flat defender widens from McLaurin out to Thomas in the flat, vacating space inside for McLaurin, so that’s where Howell throws the ball. On the second play of the clip, we see a slightly different look but the same stick concept. This time, the flat defender holds his position tighter to McLaurin which leaves him late to get out to the flat, so Howell instead throws the ball outside to Thomas in the flat. 

It’s the same concept, but the coverage dictated that the ball went to a different target and Howell made the correct read on both of those examples. You never fully know exactly what the defense is going to do on any given play, so when you have a number of good weapons like the Commanders do, it’s better to make use of all of them and forcing the defense to pick its poison rather than forcing the ball to one or two guys.

Unfortunately, for a guy like McLaurin, this can often mean the ball goes elsewhere as defenses prioritize taking him away and not letting him beat them. Everyone knows McLaurin is the best receiver on this team and the most dangerous threat, so often he has defenders paying him extra attention, which opens things up for others. 

On this play we can see McLaurin aligned outside running a curl-flat concept. As the route develops, you can see the gravity that McLaurin has. Everyone to his side of the field is deeper than on the other side. The Eagles are playing zone coverage, but the zone defenders to McLaurin’s side give him extra respect by gaining more depth to try and prevent him getting the ball. The safety over the top is deeper, the curl defender is deeper and also gaining width to match McLaurin’s route while the flat defender is pulled out of the flat to try and stay under McLaurin’s route. 

This means that while McLaurin’s route is well covered, the receiver in the flat has extra space to work with. This is a pretty common theme within the Commanders offense, which is why we see Howell quite often looking downfield and then being forced to check it down underneath to a tight end or running back in the flat. That’s not at all a bad thing for the offense because it’s a much easier throw to dump it off to the flat instead of driving the ball down the field and often it still leads to a solid gain. Here, the tight end is able to get about eight yards before the defense is able to rally down to force him out of bounds and that’s all because of McLaurin dragging those defenders out of position down the field. 

Another aspect of the offense to consider is how Bieniemy likes to move pieces around. The Commanders rely a lot on quick game passing concepts, but there’s only so many of them a team can run. So to enable the Commanders to use them more often, Bieniemy disguises them with different personnel groups, formations and motions to keep the defense from knowing what’s coming. That can mean that on one play, McLaurin can be the primary target of a quick game concept and on the next, the Commanders could be running the same concept but McLaurin is in a different spot. 

This clip shows two different examples of a concept the Andy Reid coaching tree calls Missile. It’s a three-man route combination with the inside receiver running a shallow cross designed to drag coverage over the middle and vacate space behind him for the slant from the slot. The outside receiver runs an under or pirate route to follow behind the slant just in case the slant is covered too. 

On the first play of the clip, McLaurin is lined up in the slot as the primary target on the slant. Logan Thomas lines up inside and runs the shallow cross, which drags the safety inside towards the middle linebacker, occupying both of them. That vacates space for McLaurin to run into on his slant. Howell makes the correct read and fires the ball into McLaurin for a solid gain. On the second play of the clip, we see the exact same concept against the Cowboys, but this time with the roles switched around. This time, McLaurin is aligned as the inside receiver and runs the shallow cross, so his role changes from being the primary target to being the guy designed to occupy defenders. He does his job well but the Cowboys still manage to take away the slot slant, so Howell finds Dotson on the outside. 

It’s again an example of how Washington doesn’t really care which receiver gets the ball because they know everyone they have is capable of producing when needed. Being able to switch the roles around allows Bieniemy to lean on the same handful of quick game concepts that Howell has clearly grown comfortable with while preventing the defense from knowing exactly what is coming. That’s good for Howell’s growth and development as a quarterback and generally speaking, it’s good for the offense as a unit because it’s hard for the defense to be able to defend multiple receivers instead of focusing on just taking away one or two, but it does mean that each individual receiver suffers slightly as a result. 

McLaurin’s lack of separation?

Another big question being asked about the Commanders receivers and particularly McLaurin is the lack of separation. There are some advanced stats doing the rounds that say Washington’s receivers have struggled to separate from coverage more than most, which is obviously not something you want to see. However, there is some context required for that kind of stat. 

A large part of the Commanders offense this season has been based around quick game passing concepts, allowing Sam Howell to get the ball out of his hands quickly to help negate the issues of the offensive line up front while making use of the weapons that Washington has at receiver. On many of those quick game concepts, McLaurin is often isolated to one side and asked to run a slant. 

Here are three different examples of McLaurin running those slants, the first is against press coverage, the second is against off coverage and the third is against zone coverage. McLaurin runs these slants multiple times a game and it’s a productive route for him and the offense. You can see in the clip how McLaurin is quick enough off the snap to beat press coverage, strong enough to withstand the hit from the corner breaking down on him from off coverage and adaptable enough to adjust to passes in small throwing windows against zone coverage. 

Clearly the slant is an important part of the offense for both McLaurin and the Commanders in general and McLaurin runs it well, but it’s not a route that a receiver will typically generate multiple yards of separation unless a corner just falls down. You can see in each play of that clip that there is a defender close to McLaurin each time he catches the ball. That is the nature of quick game passing. The windows underneath and particularly over the middle aren’t going to be large. 

The key with that type of route is to be able to adjust to the placement of the throw and use your body to protect the ball from the nearby defender looking to knock the ball out with a strong hit. McLaurin does those things well which has led to his success with slant routes all season, but unless a defender falls over or is caught in traffic, there isn’t likely to be a great deal of separation. 

The types of routes he’s being asked to run and the coverages the defense’s play in response will go a long way to dictating the amount of separation there is. Another common route for McLaurin to run is a shallow cross, which is great against man coverage but can be tough to hit against zone coverages.

This clip has three examples of McLaurin running a shallow cross concept with tight end Logan Thomas running a hook route to try and create traffic for him. This type of concept is designed to have McLaurin running away from man coverage and using Thomas’ route to pick the trailing defender. As we see in the first example, when the defense tries to match the crosser with man coverage or with a safety trying to cut it from deep, it’s very hard for any defender to catch up to McLaurin and he’s able to work freely across the field and turn up the sideline for a strong gain after the catch. 

However, when the defense plays zone coverage, as we see in the second and third examples, it’s a very different situation. McLaurin may actually have more “separation” at the point the ball is thrown to him, like in the second clip against the Patriots, but that’s because the Patriots are sitting off him in zone coverage. They’re then able to rally down with multiple defenders and make the stop quickly after the catch is made. With this type of route, the offense is looking for a man coverage situation where perhaps the trailing defender is closer to McLaurin, so there isn’t as much separation, but he is still in a trailing position meaning McLaurin can continue to run away from him after the catch provided the throw enables him to. 

There’s also plenty of times, as we saw above with the curl-flat combination, that McLaurin has a gravity effect. Because he’s the top threat on this team, he receives extra attention from the defense. Defenders tend to gravitate towards him when he’s nearby, which means he’s not technically creating much separation for himself, but he is creating space for others, like the tight end in that curl-flat example earlier. 

Can they do more with McLaurin?

Absolutely they can, the question is if they should. We’ve already talked about the offense not being about force feeding a specific receiver and instead spreading the ball around, so if they change philosophy to force the ball to McLaurin more, it could impact how the rest of the offense is run. Maybe that would be a good thing given the offense hasn’t been amazing, but I think Howell is overall benefitting from being developed in a style of reading and understanding defenses as a whole rather than just focusing on finding the main receiver. 

On top of that, it’s not like McLaurin is lacking in targets. If we go back to the comparison to Brown and Lamb earlier, Brown has 105 targets so far this season, Lamb has 104. McLaurin has 97, so he’s not exactly miles behind either in terms of targets. What they’ve struggled with in recent weeks is hitting those explosive plays down the field to McLaurin to help boost his yards per catch numbers. McLaurin has a very healthy 11.6 yards per reception average, but Brown and Lamb are in the 13-14 range, which might sound minimal but adds up over the number of catches. It means they’re being found more consistently down the field, whereas the Commanders are relying more on quick game stuff with McLaurin. 

They have attempted to hit McLaurin on some deeper shots, particularly with double moves, but they’ve either had issues with protection to prevent them from hitting those shots consistently or like in the Cowboys game recently, Howell’s throw hasn’t quite been good enough. 

Here we see a shot to McLaurin on third and short. McLaurin runs a stutter-go double move and gets perhaps a yard on the defender, but maybe drifts a little too far towards the sidelines in order to gain that advantage. That makes things harder on Howell because the throwing window becomes that much smaller, but Howell spots McLaurin with a step and takes the shot. Unfortunately, his throw is just slightly underthrown and a little too far inside. McLaurin does his best to work back to the ball but is unable to make the play with the defender nearby.

Howell’s shots down the field, particularly over the second half of the season, have just been slightly off. Sometimes it’s a few inches too long or a yard or two too wide, but when throwing that far down the field those small distances make all the difference. The connection with McLaurin in particular hasn’t been there lately, which has meant McLaurin and the offense has lacked explosive plays to boost both the stats and the score. Going forward, I think finding that connection with McLaurin on throws down the field, which Howell showed he had earlier in the season, is what would help boost McLaurin's production, and that of the offense, in a way that allows Howell to continue to develop properly without leaning on just throwing it up to McLaurin all the time.