Let’s take a deep breath and acknowledge a truth about the events of the week: Holding a celebratory, welcome-home news conference for an NFL team — complete with legends from the franchise’s decorated past, the best way to stir emotions — is at best premature and at worst disrespectful to the citizens who are going to be footing the bill. No, not all of the bill. But not nothing, either.

The Washington Commanders may well move back to the District, to the RFK Stadium site that feels like the team’s spiritual home. Thus, the political pep rally held Monday. But let’s not act as though this is a straight-up gift from a new ownership group whose reputation is glistening in part because it is held up against that of the previous, dreadful regime.

Yes, the $2.7 billion that Josh Harris’s group would put into a new stadium on the eastern edge of Capitol Hill is a large number, and it doesn’t appear he’s trying to fleece the District. But another large number is $1 billion, which appears to be the floor on funds that would come from D.C. Don’t allow the mayor’s office to distract you by saying the percentage of public money is the lowest of any recently built NFL stadium. It’s not, because suburban Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium received a total of $0.

Make your case, Mayor Bowser. Make it with enthusiasm and emotion. But make it honestly and transparently.

This isn’t to throw water on these plans. RFK Stadium and its surroundings are a blight, an opportunity waiting to happen. The important part, now that there’s an agreement between the Commanders and the District: Make sure D.C. and its residents get the best deal possible. And the best deal possible isn’t the one Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) would send to the D.C. Council as part of her upcoming budget.

“At this point, this is just a deal that is so much public money, it’s just not fair to D.C. residents or to D.C. taxpayers,” Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) said by phone Tuesday. “What I hear pretty loud and clear from a lot of folks is: There’s a lot of folks that could see a stadium being a part of the future site, but they just don’t feel like this deal is a good one for the city, and they want the council to do their job and really push hard.”

A reminder: Monday’s announcement, with a gleeful Bowser flanked by Harris and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, might have felt like the end of a long, meandering process. It’s really just the start of one.

Ask Ted Leonsis, the owner of the NHL’s Capitals, the NBA’s Wizards and the WNBA’s Mystics, how his new arena development is coming along in Northern Virginia. Shoot, go back two decades and ask MLB about its move of the Montreal Expos to Washington. MLB announced it in September 2004. By December, the D.C. Council torpedoed it. D.C. United flirted with Maryland’s Prince George’s County and an across-the-river site in the District — over years and years and years — before landing on Buzzard Point.

Yeah, when Virginia fell through, Leonsis got a good deal — the best deal for the District — to refurbish Capital One Arena and keep the Caps and Wiz downtown. And, sure, the Nationals are a fixture in the District now, celebrating their 20th anniversary season. But it took then-Council chair Linda W. Cropp to help wrest a better deal out of MLB before funding for what would become Nationals Park was secured.

That’s what is needed now. It’s easy for J.P. from Maryland and Grant from Virginia — or any Commanders fan who doesn’t live in the city — to laud the mayor and get excited about a 65,000-seat stadium they might visit eight or 10 times a year. But fans in Maryland and Virginia aren’t paying for this package.

The mayor’s office is pushing the idea that only 24% of the funding is coming from the District. Another way to look at it: Of the nine NFL stadiums that have opened or are being built since 2009, only one — the upcoming facility for the Tennessee Titans in Nashville — is receiving more public cash.

This, at a time when the District’s bond rating was just downgraded, which could make it more expensive to borrow money. This, at a time when the federal workforce is shrinking by the day, meaning a company town is losing company people — and jobs. This, at a time when the budget Bowser will submit to the council could cut hundreds of millions of dollars from city services. Yeah, maybe the capital budget that funds projects such as this is a different bucket. But the District as a whole is a bucket that’s leaking at the moment.

“And in the same budget, they’re going to tell us we have to spend [more than $1 billion] to build a stadium,” Allen said. “That doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m hearing from a lot of folks it doesn’t sit well with, either.”

Allen — whose ward includes much of the Capitol Hill neighborhood to the west of the RFK site — has long expressed reservations about using the 177 acres there primarily for a stadium. Those arguments, though, were in theory. Now, there’s a real proposal on the table.

Why not go for a better one?

“As a legislator, as well as a constituent, do I think it would be fun that I could probably walk or bike over to the stadium to catch a game?” Allen said. “That’d be pretty awesome. I think that sounds pretty fun.

“That’s not the job I have right now. I have to think that this is a good deal for the taxpayer, for the future of our city, and this isn’t a good deal right now.”

He’s not alone. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) issued a statement Tuesday that read in part: “The deal was negotiated without input from the Council of the District of Columbia and the public, and neighbors deserve the opportunity to weigh in on what is best for all of us.”

Side note: The Commanders think they’ll have events at the stadium 200 days annually? Calling 200 Pinocchios on that. AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, has 15 non-Dallas Cowboys events scheduled for the rest of the year. One of them is a blood drive. MetLife Stadium has 38 non-New York Jets and Giants events between now and the NFL season. Thirty-eight seems aggressive for D.C. — and 200 seems like a fantasy.

Harris’s group deserves credit for delivering on every promise it has made to this point. And a Washington Post-Schar School poll from 2024 showed a large majority of District residents preferred the Commanders’ next stadium be built in Washington.

But the term sheet the parties signed should be viewed as a starting point for negotiations. Should there really be 8,000 parking spots for the new site? Or could Metro be expanded and more space be devoted to residential or commercial or recreational use? What, if any, revenue would the District receive from parking decks that it would own? Will the Washington Commanders really keep their football operations in Ashburn, Virginia, and their business operations in College Park and not bring any full-time jobs to the District? Would the Commanders — and only the Commanders — benefit from the development of the adjacent “Plaza District,” which is supposed to be used for restaurants, bars and hotels?

The mayor and the team took a victory lap Monday. It is early for that. The Commanders could eventually come home. Let’s make sure it’s on terms that benefit everyone — not just the mayor and the team.