Patriots’ Stefon Diggs looking like a No. 1 WR again ahead of return to Buffalo
The 31-year-old receiver got off to a solid start but picked it up last week against the Panthers. Can he become Drake Maye's go-to option?
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Stefon Diggs heard the criticism of how he was handled in his first training camp with the New England Patriots.
He had been the marquee free agent the team added this offseason. Not the one signed to the biggest contract, but the one arriving with the most name recognition and history of success. The Patriots signed Diggs to halt their run of poor wide receiver play after the team ranked last in the NFL in production from that position a year ago. But they also wanted him to help elevate Drake Maye’s play, similar to what Diggs did with a young Josh Allen in Buffalo.
But this summer, Diggs wasn’t involved every day in every drill of training camp. It was part of a regimen designed by the team to get Diggs ready for the season after he suffered a torn ACL late last October while playing for the Houston Texans.
The 31-year-old receiver was healthy and ready for Week 1, and he was solid but unspectacular in New England’s first three games, totaling 13 receptions for 112 yards.
Now, one month into the NFL season, the slow ramp-up for Diggs is paying dividends. In the Pats’ Week 4 win over the Carolina Panthers, he had his best performance in two years, a six-catch, 101-yard output in which he looked like the former star receiver who made four straight Pro Bowls with the Bills.
His emergence comes just in time for Diggs’ first trip back to Buffalo since the Bills jettisoned him to Houston via trade. If Diggs is, indeed, back to playing like a No. 1 receiver, that will go a long way toward ensuring Maye’s hot start to the season is sustainable.
The optimistic outlook is that Diggs needed a few games to trust his surgically repaired knee, and he’s ready to build off his breakout performance last week. The more pessimistic one is that it was simply a one-game outlier against a bad team, not a predictor of future success.
“I’m not scared at all,” Diggs said of running on his rehabbed knee. “I trust that I put the time in. … Everyone wasn’t too happy about camp. But they managed camp, knowing that I needed a short leash. If you gave me too much leash, I was just going to run myself into the ground. So I feel like I’m in a good spot. I try not to talk about injuries too much, but put on the tape, I look halfway decent.”
The numbers back that up. Even though the Patriots have limited Diggs to a No. 3 receiver role — at least based on the number of snaps he’s getting, where he sits behind Kayshon Boutte and Mack Hollins — his stats look good on a per-route and per-catch basis.
Among wide receivers with at least 60 routes run, Diggs ranks first in the NFL in receptions per target, nabbing 87 percent of the balls thrown his way without any drops. His reliability is important for Maye, following the Patriots’ receiver struggles a year ago. Diggs also ranks eighth in the league in expected points added per target, 11th in yards per route run and 17th in yards per target.
Essentially, the efficiency numbers support the idea that Diggs is getting back to being a No. 1 wide receiver, even if the production stats aren’t there yet.
Still, last week, Diggs drew attention when he said after the game that his comfort level in Josh McDaniels’ offense was a five out of 10.
“When I said it was a five out of 10, obviously I was being facetious or sarcastic in a way,” Diggs said. “Just because I look at it like I never want to get too comfortable. I said five out of 10 because if it’s eight out of 10 or nine out of 10, then I don’t really have to look over my notes and look at it multiple times. For me, I’m trying to keep it at a level of being hungry and humble. Not going in thinking I’ve got it all figured out.”
Diggs didn’t get into his frustration with the departure from Buffalo — “It’s the nature of the business, I guess,” he said — but said this trip back for a prime-time showcase on Sunday night is going to be “hard and emotional.”
“To me, it’s really sentimental,” Diggs said. “I spent a lot of time there, and I’m really familiar with the staff and the guys there. … I’m going to try to keep the main thing the main thing, but it’s going to be a hell of an atmosphere and I was a part of that for a long time.”
The Patriots haven’t had a 1,000-yard receiver since Tom Brady left, with Julian Edelman the last to accomplish that feat in 2019. Diggs is on pace for 906.
The promising part for Diggs and the Patriots is that the efficiency has existed all season, even as the coaching staff limited him to less than 55 percent of the offensive snaps in the first three weeks. On Sunday, Diggs played 63 percent of the snaps (and it probably would have been more if the game were not a blowout), and the results were great.
Now, as Diggs prepares to face the team he once starred for, he seems on the cusp of an impressive comeback season. But remember, it was just 11 months ago that Diggs tore his ACL. And questions come with a significant injury like that, especially for 31-year-old receivers.
Yet if last week was any indication, Diggs might be on his way back to being a high-end wideout — and helping out a resurgent Patriots offense.
“I feel like we got a lot of the bad stuff out in the beginning when we fell on our face a couple times with self-inflicted wounds and penalties,” Diggs said. “But you see the recipe works when everyone is doing their job and playing clean football.”
