Early on in Week 1 of the 2019 season, when the Washington Redskins had a nice first-half lead over the Philadelphia Eagles, Redskins special teams coach Nate Kaczor knew that he was missing out big time.
It wasn’t detrimental to the team, of course, but Kaczor knew that he would never get to utilize Terry McLaurin in the special teams as he had envisioned, having just watched him haul in a 70-yard touchdown on offense.
“That would be like getting a Christmas present and just when you opened it, your brother snatches it from you and you never get it back,” Kaczor said, via NBC Sports Washington. “It was humorous how fast that happened. Right off the bat.”
The truth is that McLaurin — who was drafted out of Ohio State in the third round of the 2019 draft — was thought to be primarily a special teams player early in his career while working his way up on the offense. Of course, McLaurin had different plans.
“Obviously with Terry, his makeup just as a football player, his character, his effort, intelligence, speed, the fact that that happened doesn’t surprise anybody,” Kaczor said. “So I was really happy for our football team and I was really happy for Terry.”
I think we can all be happy that McLaurin was able to assume a bigger role, and we were able to leave that return spot to Steven Sims Jr., where he took advantage of the opportunity and cracked his way into the offense. Will Antonio Gibson be the next player to follow that path? We can only hope.
