Commanders’ Terry McLaurin Focused on Cowboys Lesson Not Titans Redemption

As soon as the game ended in the Washington Commanders’ Week 11 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles conversations started shifting toward the long break and how much time the team had before it could get rid of that bad feeling against the Dallas Cowboys.

Now, following another Commanders loss – to the hands of those Cowboys – and even more bad feelings stemming from it, while some are talking about if this team can get right against the Tennessee Titans it’s going to be critical they take their time to fully digest their third-straight loss first.

Washington receiver Terry McLaurin made a point of emphasizing this fact in his postgame conversation with local media following the Week 12 loss.

“I don’t want to look too far to Sunday because Sunday’s going to take care of itself next week,” McLaurin said. “We got to get some things fixed in the film room, so we’re already looking forward to looking at the film and just having ‘Tell the Truth Monday’ like (head coach Dan Quinn) says. I mean we all got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what we can do better.”

To McLaurin’s point, as a team the Commanders have to get better, especially on offense where the unit failed to score on two possessions starting in the Dallas end of the field after defensive and special teams plays set the group up for early success.

Across the organization Sunday night the message of everyone coming together to fix the issues was common. From coaches to players the unit is focused on fixing the unit, but it is going to take some hard-focused individual advancement to do that as well.

“I just want to continue to try to control what I can and keep making sure that we have the right attitude and approach as we come into practice and the games,” McLaurin said. “Trying to make a play when the ball comes to me and just controlling that aspect of my job, and I try to provide a spark when I can. …As an offense, we have to find a better job of staying on the field. I think that was a strength of ours in the first half of the season and it’s not right now. So we got to figure out how to get that back to being a strength of our offense because when we’re tempo, when we’re staying on the field, it allows us to keep the playbook open and continue to put pressure on the defense.”

McLaurin also said nobody is hanging their heads on this team right now. That they still have confidence in what they can do individually and as a team.

While that wasn’t physically true on Sunday after the game – there were plenty of heads hanging in the home locker room after the loss – it is true from a mentality standpoint. Even the multiple guys who put the loss fully on their own shoulders, kicker Austin Seibert and safety Jeremy Reaves just to name a couple, echoed the sentiment that they are and can be better.

So don’t expect this Washington squad to give up on itself even as some start to move it out of the competitive conversations it was in just weeks ago. And if every Commanders player on the roster and coach on the staff takes the same approach McLaurin is conveying here, then there’s another chance to see the old production come back in Week 13 – when the time comes.

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