Washington handed Laremy Tunsil $60 million in March to keep Jayden Daniels’ blindside safe, and five months later a career right tackle is the answer. Cool cool cool.
Tunsil signed a two-year, $60.2 million extension in March, a deal that averages $30.1 million per year and made him the highest-paid offensive lineman in league history. You pay that number for one reason: so the quarterback behind him never has to think about his blindside. That’s the entire bet the Washington Commanders made this offseason, and it’s the exact bet that blows up when a team leans on one durable star instead of stacking real depth behind him. One bad rep in a one-on-one pass-rush drill, and the plan’s most expensive piece is done before Week 1.
Saturday’s practice ended that plan fast. Tunsil tore his triceps in a one-on-one drill against Odafe Oweh at the team’s facility in Ashburn, and he’ll likely need surgery. The team is already bracing for him to miss a significant portion, possibly all, of the 2026 season.
Five-time Pro Bowler. Second-most important piece of this offense behind Daniels himself. Gone before the games count.
That’s the headline nobody in Ashburn wanted to write in August, five months after ownership decided Tunsil was worth paying more than any lineman ever had been.
Andrew Wylie, a career right tackle who has kicked inside to guard before, is the presumptive fill-in at left tackle now. Andrew Wylie at left tackle for Jayden Daniels is a sentence that did not exist on anyone’s roster plan in March. Josh Conerly Jr., last year’s first-round pick, could slide over to right tackle if Wylie moves outside, and Brandon Coleman, who started a dozen games as a rookie in 2024, is another name in the mix. None of them are Laremy Tunsil. That was the entire point of the contract.
I’ll give the roster-builders this much credit: a torn triceps in a routine practice rep isn’t a scheme problem, it’s bad luck that happens to guards and Pro Bowlers alike. Nothing about how this line was constructed made Tunsil’s arm more likely to give out than anyone else’s. The depth behind him is thinner than you’d want now that the injury is real, but that’s true for plenty of teams who just haven’t had to find out yet.
Washington’s other big offseason addition soaked up the headlines this summer. The offensive line quietly landed a five-time Pro Bowler on the richest deal a lineman has ever signed, and now it’s the unit nobody wants to talk about, sitting there in the middle of training camp battles across the league that suddenly look a lot calmer than Washington’s.
Adam Schefter says the regular season itself is in jeopardy, with the team still working out the real timeline:
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/2086246621898035488
Nobody has a real timeline yet on when Tunsil comes back, which is its own flavor of bad news. Tunsil’s $60M investment is now protecting nobody, and Washington gets to spend the next several weeks finding out how much of the plan survives without him.
