The uprising of Terry McLaurin

Image credit: Thearon W. Henderson

Former Ohio Buckeye wide receiver, Terry McLaurin has been the Washington Redskins only bright spot of their offense thus far. He’s rose to stardom for Washington, but it wasn’t always like this. This is the story of ‘Scary Terry’ 

McLaurin, a four-star recruit from Cathedral High School in Indianapolis, Indiana decided to commit to Ohio State in 2014 despite being offered by his hometown college, and Big Ten rival, Indiana. 

The interesting part about his commitment to OSU was that he worked for his scholarship. He wasn’t at first recruited by Urban Meyer in spite of McLaurin being the 34th ranked wide receiver in his class. He wanted to go to a school ‘for football’ rather than going to a team not known for their football in Indiana. He put on a show at camp and earned the respect from the Buckeyes staff and the scholarship.  

This ignorance has ultimately helped him get to where he is today.  

The fleet-footed McLaurin had won the Indiana Mr. Football award in 2013 before attending Ohio State. Ohio runs an offense that speedy receivers typically thrive in, reasoning why he wanted to attend the dominant Buckeyes team.  

McLaurin was red-shirted as a freshman for extra development, and since OSU already had a talented receiving core.  

In his red-shirt freshman year, McLaurin only saw the field on special teams. He recorded seven total tackles in six games of play.  

In his sophomore year, McLaurin showed his receiver ability as he caught 11 passes for 114 yards and two touchdowns. Still, he was mostly featured as a special team's specialist since Ohio State preferred the more experienced deep threat, Curtis Samuel and Noah Brown.  

His Junior year at OSU, McLaurin had gotten more playing time but didn’t over impress as their slot receiver. He hauled in 29 receptions for 436 and six touchdowns. He did show his deep threat ability averaging 15.0 yards per receptions. That was good enough for the third-leading receiver on his team (which is where he was listed). He didn’t overperform his status. 

In McLaurin’s senior year, he showed his deep-threat ability. ‘Scary Terry’ had 35 catches for 701 yards and 11 touchdowns. All career-best and averaged Big Ten best 20 yards per reception. He compensates in yards rather than receptions. He was the field stretcher for Dwayne Haskins his quarterback at OSU and now in Washington.

McLaurin was later taken in the third round by the Redskins 76th overall, after reassuring his deep threat ability at the combine, running a 4.35 40-yard dash, good enough for the seventh-fastest overall in the combine.  

Now, McLaurin has the most receiving yards by any rookie this season over notable rookies like Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown, D.K. Metcalf, and T.J. Hockenson.

After yesterday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, he currently has 23 receptions for 408 yards and five touchdowns. McLaurin also has the highest first down receiving percentage out of any rookie at 87% and is second highest out of eligible receivers in the entire league, behind Chris Godwin of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp0_lje7oKc

To say scouts got this one wrong is an understatement. They completely missed on McLaurin and the Redskins got their number one receiver for the long haul.  

And that was the story of Terry McLaurin. Now the future will be the remaining talking point for the young Washington wide-out.  

- Alex Fortuna