Stefon Diggs’ Tweets Seem Eerily Familiar To Viking Fans
Cole Smith
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On March 16, 2020, the Minnesota Vikings dealt one of the top young wide receivers in the NFL to the Buffalo Bills. In return, the Vikings received Buffalo’s 2020 first-round pick (No. 22 overall), 2020 fifth-round pick, 2020 sixth-round pick and 2021 fourth-round pick. With Buffalo’s 2020 first-round pick, the Vikings selected Justin Jefferson, offsetting the Diggs trade.
But while Jefferson broke the rookie receiving yardage record with 1,400 yards in 2020, Diggs was helping lead the Bills to their deepest postseason run since 1994. He set career-highs in both receptions (127) and yardage (1,535 yards) in 2020. For his efforts, he was selected as a first-team All-Pro, helping lead the Bills to the AFC Championship Game.
Following another Pro Bowl season in Buffalo, fans would expect that Diggs is content with his new team. They were an overtime thriller away from hosting the AFC Championship, and Josh Allen may just be the most dynamic quarterback in football. But after the Green Bay Packers traded Davante Adams and the Kansas City Chiefs shipped away Tyreek Hill, we may be seeing the same old Stefon Diggs.
Diggs was known for his cryptic tweets before being traded away from Minnesota. He believed, and may have been correct, that the run-first operation the Vikings deployed didn’t suit the offense’s (and, most importantly to Diggs, his own) skillset. In Buffalo, Diggs has been targeted 330 times in two seasons. This was a much heavier workload than in Minnesota, when he was targeted 534 times in five seasons.
So with all of the Bills’ success the past two seasons, and Diggs’ own individual success, one would expect that Diggs is content in Buffalo. But when Hill was traded, Diggs went straight to Twitter. On March 23, he tweeted, “The hell going on…”. One day later, he tweeted, “It’s always business… never personal.” As if those weren’t enough, Diggs’ brother, Trevon, began to weigh in on a potential trade.
Perhaps Diggs, a top-10 wideout in football, saw the money that Adams and Hill received and began to grow frustrated. Diggs has two years left on a 5-year, $72 million deal. Meanwhile, Adams received a 5-year, $141.25 million contract from the Las Vegas Raiders. Hill exceeded that when Miami gave him a brand new 4-year, $120 million extension of his own.
It also didn’t help that in Buffalo’s dramatic loss to the Chiefs in the Divisional Round that it was Diggs’ teammate Gabriel Davis that stole the show as a receiver. Davis caught eight passes for 201 yards and tied a playoff record with four touchdowns, including the go-ahead score with 13 seconds remaining in regulation. Diggs, meanwhile, caught only three passes for seven yards in the instant classic. Even had the Bills won, one would have to believe that the guy who gave us the Minneapolis Miracle wasn’t thrilled to be in the background of a primetime game.
OTAs begin this month. Stefon Diggs and his teammates will surely be asked about a potential trade. They will deflect the question, but as Diggs said in 2019, there is truth to all rumors. Even if Diggs is a Bill in 2022, it will be worth keeping an eye on him because of his past history with Minnesota. Buffalo continues to knock on the door in the AFC before losing in heartbreaking fashion in the playoffs. Would another playoff exit with no Super Bowl be enough for Diggs to want out?
But as always, money talks, and with Josh Allen’s massive 6-year, $258 million deal, the Bills won’t be able to keep every high-profile player on the team. Patrick Mahomes’ contract made it impossible for the Chiefs to keep Hill, and the suitors lined up for him. Things haven’t gone off the rails yet for Diggs in Buffalo, but Vikings fans have seen this movie before. Will the issue resolve itself without a new deal this year? Or will Diggs force the Bills to trade him? In one of the whackiest off-seasons in NFL history, never say never when it comes to Diggs getting loud about a new contract.
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