Terry McLaurin has always been a guy who embraced high standards and lofty expectations.
So you can imagine how difficult it has been for him in Washington for the past five years, where the bar generally has been set lower than Dan Snyder at a female empowerment seminar.
These days, though, McLaurin is like a kid at the Hershey factory.
Standards and expectations? The 5-2 Washington Commanders are meeting and exceeding them.
Granted, it’s early. We’re only seven games into the NFL season.
But for years, this organization hasn’t gotten past zero on the daily factory safety scoreboard.
Sunday’s 40-7 win over Carolina with backup quarterback Marcus Mariota behind center was validation for McLaurin that the standards and expectations that coach Dan Quinn spelled out shortly after his arrival are real, and not just coach-speak platitudes.
“It’s not just a word,” McLaurin said in the locker room at Northwest Stadium after the game. “It’s what we are putting out there on film. I think it is a testament to that when you lose your starting quarterback and the next guy comes in and leads a two-minute drive to score a touchdown before the half. Going forward, we still want to score more touchdowns than field goals. I can’t say enough about Marcus and the way we still kept the foot on the gas throughout the game.”
Foot on the gas? They rolled up 421 yards of offense, averaging 6.7 yards per play. McLaurin had six catches for 98 yards. They led by 27 points at the half, their biggest lead at halftime in a game since 2005. The last time a Washington football team defeated an opponent by 33 points was in 2015. I know it was the 1-5 Panthers, but there have been Washington teams that couldn’t floor it like that if there was no one else on the field.
“I think that’s the standard we set for ourselves no matter who is in there,” McLaurin continued. “There is no drop-off. We expect ourselves to execute at a very high level. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. It gets to a point in the game where it is really us versus us and we just have to continue to execute.”
That message – “us against us” – is not just something McLaurin pulled out of the air. He’s heard it before.
“The central theme of our program is going to be competing,” Quinn said after the game. “And sometimes it’s competing really against yourself to see how good you can get. And other times, like now and during this week, could we compete to get stronger and find ways to get better and acknowledge that we’ve got work to do and stuff to hit on. And so, although this game obviously was Carolina, we made it as much about us during the week of preparation as we could because we really wanted to dig in on ourselves and find the next gear and find the things that we can do.”
It is a testament to Quinn and his coaching staff that the message they delivered to his team – a roster with more than half of them newcomers, a group that had to learn to come together – resonates in the locker room from the leaders like McLaurin.
“We did create a standard as a team together and that was from the players and that began way back in the spring the week before the draft,” Quinn said. “And we put some things down on paper of who we wanted to be and how we wanted to do business together. We felt it was important to establish that before those 20, maybe it was 24, 25 rookies arrived to say this is how we do things here at the Commanders. This is how we practice, this is the way you go, this is what you do for a walkthrough. And so, having these guys get connected early, that was very important.
“So that’s the standard and it’s called the “Commanders’ standard” that they wrote together, and that expectation is just us constantly searching for improvement,” Quinn said.
Culture, identity, standards – they are synonyms for the way you go about your business, the way you approach each and every day no matter who is out there, no matter what plays are being called. McLaurin has always practiced this, but he often found himself on an island. No longer.
“I think everybody has to buy into that,” he said. “We’ve got a group that has. When you don’t have the ball, you’re playing hard without it, you’re trying to find blocks down the field, you’re chasing after the ball in case there is a fumble. Being happy for one another and cheering each other on, that is part of our standard. It is a way of life we are trying to implement each and every week, no matter who the opponent is. We know if we play our style of ball, we will have a chance to win the game.”
It is put to the test every week. It will be put to the test Sunday afternoon against a good Chicago Bears team.
But with each week so far this season — even in the loss to the Baltimore Ravens — the standards have become stronger and the expectations greater.
⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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