How long will the Buffalo Bills be able to keep former Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs happy?
In his first NFL season that wasn’t in a Minnesota Vikings uniform, things could not have turned out much better for current Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs.
The Bills immediately gave Diggs what he was hoping for and they made him the No. 1 receiver in their offense. It resulted in the former Vikings pass-catcher leading the league in receptions and receiving yards for the first time in his career.
Thanks in part to Diggs‘ performance, Buffalo was able to advance all the way to the AFC Championship last season. This year, the Bills are hoping for more of the same from the former Minnesota receiver.
How will the Buffalo Bills keep Stefon Diggs happy to avoid something similar to his departure from the Minnesota Vikings?
Following his very impressive season in 2020, many people are now including Diggs in the conversation about who the No. 1 receiver is in the NFL. He’s on the minds of a whole lot more people than just the fans of the Bills.
One of the first times Diggs entered the national spotlight in a major way was back in the 2017 playoffs when he was on the receiving end of the “Minneapolis Miracle“.
He ended up getting a lucrative extension from the Vikings not too long after that incredible moment and it felt like he was going to be in the Twin Cities for a very long time.
Looking back though, it feels like that miracle catch might have changed Diggs’ mentality and the confidence he had in himself moving forward. It pushed him to new heights as a player, but it also raised the expectations he had for himself in Minnesota’s offense.
So when he wasn’t a focal point of the game plan early in the 2019 season, his relationship with the Vikings really began to crumble. There were rumblings of his displeasure with the franchise taking place a few months earlier, but his unhappiness with Minnesota truly became public knowledge after he only had 19 targets in the team’s first four matchups of the 2019 campaign.
In two of the Vikings’ first four games of 2019, Diggs finished with a total of five targets. However, Minnesota won both of these matchups and in the other two games that turned out to be losses, Diggs was targeted seven times in each contest.
During the majority of his tenure with the Vikings, Diggs would always emphasize how winning was extremely important to him, which is the case for most players in the NFL. But he’s also made it known in the past that he wasn’t happy with the five total targets he had during Minnesota’s first two victories of the 2019 season.
So which is it? Is Diggs truly willing to do whatever it takes for his team to win, or are his intentions geared more towards personal accolades?
Coming off a season with Buffalo in which he was targeted 166 times, he’s going to want a similar amount of passes thrown his way this year. If that doesn’t happen, how will Diggs react? Will the frustration he displayed at times with the Vikings make a comeback?
As a guy who just led the NFL in receiving yards and catches, he’s probably going to want to be paid like he’s one of the top receivers in the league too. Currently, Diggs’ average salary ranks 19th among wide receivers in the league, and it’s extremely unlikely that he’s happy about that.
The Bills are also currently in the process of working out a possible extension for quarterback Josh Allen. Whenever that deal is completed, it’s not going to be a cheap one. So will Buffalo even have enough money left to give Diggs the pay raise he’ll probably be looking for?
Diggs was never really vocal about some of the problems he had with Minnesota during his time with the team (he saved that for when he left). The receiver expressed his unhappiness in different ways like skipping OTA sessions (like he did this week with the Bills) or not showing up to a practice because he had a “cold“.
Buffalo knew what they were getting into when they traded for Diggs and they should be ecstatic about how things turned out during his first season with the team. But how long will this happy relationship last before Diggs lets his frustrations get the best of him and he forces his way out of town like he did with the Vikings?
Leave your predictable comments about this being written by a salty Minnesota fan below.