Terry McLaurin — Week 2: A Touchdown Reversed, Two Catches

10 to nothing, Cowboys, two 24 left in the first quarter, third and 18 at the Washington 22. Jayden Daniels threw deep right to Terry McLaurin, who was tackled at the 46, 24 yards and a first down. +3.5 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and 6.5 points of win probability, the chance of winning the game after the play against before it, the largest gain on either count by any Washington pass or run in the game. The down and distance were partly his own doing: two snaps earlier an eight-yard catch of his came back on an offensive pass interference call against him. The drive ended in a field goal.

The play that defined his day did not count either. Second and two at the Dallas 34, eight oh one left in the second quarter, down three to 17: Daniels deep right to McLaurin, ruled a 34-yard touchdown on the field, reviewed, and reversed to an incompletion. −0.6 expected points instead of a score. Rachaad White converted the third and two on the next snap and Stefon Diggs finished the drive from the four, so Washington got its seven points and McLaurin did not get his six.

The line: nine targets, two catches, 50 yards, no touchdown, two first downs, +1.9 expected points on the targets. The second catch came from Marcus Mariota on the second snap of the second half, second and six at the Washington 44: short right, six yards in the air and 20 after it, 26 to the Dallas 30, worth +2.3 expected points and 4.8 points of win probability. That drive ended in a field goal too. The seven incompletions: the reversed touchdown; short left on first and 10 with two oh four left in the half; short middle on first and goal from the one with 12 seconds left in the half; deep right from Mariota on first and 10 with six 32 left in the third; deep right on second and six from the Dallas 23 with two 55 left in the third, a throw made by the rookie receiver Antonio Williams; short right to open the fourth-quarter touchdown drive; and deep left on second and four with 10 54 left. Five of the nine throws are labeled deep in the play-by-play, and the 24-yarder is the one that was caught. Four targets before halftime, five after. One third-down target, converted.

Nine targets led Washington and tied CeeDee Lamb for the most in the game; White, Diggs and Dyami Brown had six each. Four came from Daniels, four from Mariota and one from Williams. The throws to him traveled a hundred 54 yards in the air, more than twice Diggs's 72, the next most on the team, and 50 receiving yards led Washington by three over Diggs.

Back in June the preview put McLaurin on the watchlist — the 20-third receiver off the board at pick 53, a proven 23-percent-share receiver coming off a 10-game season, with a healthy Daniels as the bounce case and age and a regressed touchdown rate as the drags. Week 1 was four targets and 14 yards while Diggs drew nine, and that episode said the target tree had leaned away from him. Sunday it leaned back: nine targets to Diggs's six, 26 percent of the throws with a receiver's name on them, per the weekly stat file, above the 23 percent share the preview described. The production did not follow, and the bounce case took a hit of its own when Daniels left at halftime with a left elbow injury and was ruled out, per Zachary Pereles at CBS Sports. Two games, one of each kind of share, settle little. Washington is home to the Seahawks on Sunday the 20-seventh.

_Data via nflverse._