It’s obvious why the Houston Texans traded for Stefon Diggs. It’s the same reason the team spent $142 million in fully guaranteed money on free agents this offseason—the second most of any team in the NFL. With phenom quarterback C.J. Stroud on a cost-controlled rookie contract for the next four years, the time to invest in talent around him is now.
The fact that they traded a 2025 second-round pick for Diggs is just more evidence that the Texans, the surprise AFC South winner last season, are going all in right away. They’re bolstering their receiver room with a perennial playmaker who has six straight years with more than 1,000 yards each. The best-case scenario for Houston would be if Diggs plays like the elite talent we have seen him be in both Buffalo and Minnesota, helps accelerate Stroud’s development, and propels Houston deep into the playoffs.
Again, the motivation for acquiring Diggs is obvious. But what’s not so clear is why the Texans gave up a future second-round pick for him and agreed to void the final three years of his contract. Those are the first of several questions about what looked like a reasonable trade for both sides on Wednesday, but now seems to be more of a puzzling move for the Texans.
Why the hell did the Houston Texans trade a likely top-50 pick for one year of Diggs’s services?
General manager Nick Caserio has never been scared of the trade market. Last year, he traded a future first-round pick to move up to no. 3 to draft pass rusher Will Anderson Jr., one pick after selecting Stroud. Last month, he was dealing again, initiating a trade with the Vikings in which Houston sent Minnesota a 2024 first-round pick (no. 23) and seventh-rounder in exchange for two second-rounders (one each in 2024 and 2025) and a 2024 sixth-round pick. Before anyone could even fire off a Brian Windhorst meme, Caserio sent the 2025 second-rounder Houston got from Minnesota to Buffalo for Diggs, also sending along a 2024 sixth-round pick and a 2025 fifth-rounder. The Texans essentially moved down 19 spots, from no. 23 to no. 42, to acquire Diggs, who had four years remaining on the extension he signed with Buffalo two years ago. Initially, it seemed like a home run trade for Houston because Diggs’s contract with Buffalo was both affordable and team friendly. His scheduled cap hit of $19.05 million in 2024 would have ranked 13th among receivers, and there was no guaranteed money left after this year, meaning the Texans would have had the option to keep Diggs or move on after seeing how things worked out in the upcoming season.
But it turns out that the contract isn’t team friendly at all. It’s the opposite, as ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported on Thursday:
That $3.5 million pay raise in 2024 makes Diggs the 11th-highest-paid receiver in the league in 2024, and he’s set to be an unrestricted free agent next offseason, at age 31. The positive spin (or maybe it’s just how the Texans are rationalizing it), as Schefter put it, is that Diggs now has “added incentive” to give the Texans “the best version of himself.” Caserio must view this as a short-term (and therefore relatively low-risk) investment while the team can stand to be über-aggressive because of Stroud’s early success and rookie contract. Caserio may also sense that Diggs will not be a happy camper if he doesn’t receive an opportunity to earn a new contract in free agency next offseason. And maybe giving Diggs all the leverage in what is now a contract year will draw the best out of him. But perhaps it will also keep the relationship between the team and Diggs, a historically mercurial player, more cordial (and ideally private) than his stints in Minnesota and Buffalo.
The reality is that the Texans traded what will likely be a top-50 pick in 2025—it’s the Vikings’ second-rounder, and only three teams have a lower projected win total in 2024 than Minnesota (at 6.5)—for Diggs on a one-year agreement that’s intended to keep his focus on the field and make him play nice off it. And that’s after arguably the worst 10-game stretch of his career.
Why did Diggs’s production drop off in the second half of last season?
What sort of player are the Texans getting in Diggs? Even at peak motivation, is he still an elite player, worth paying WR1 money and giving 150 or more targets to? Or was the drop-off in production late last season an unfixable issue that will follow him from Buffalo to Houston?
Diggs was stellar at the start of last year. He was among the top five wideouts in receiving yards (834), receiving touchdowns (seven), and receiving first downs (41) in Weeks 1-9. His route efficiency was also among the best in the sport; he ranked seventh among receivers in yards per route run (2.45) and first in downs per route run (0.12) in the same nine-game stretch. He was the Diggs we’d come to expect in Buffalo—a silky-smooth route runner with elite separation ability at all three levels of the field and the focal point of the Bills offense. Until he wasn’t.
Stefon Diggs 2023-24 Production
Diggs’s production fell off a cliff after Week 9. Sure, he ran fewer routes and saw fewer targets on a per-game basis, but his role in the offense wasn’t the only problem. He simply wasn’t playing at the level we’ve come to expect from such a routinely dominant player. His yards-per-game dip from 92.7 in Weeks 1-9 to 43.6 from Week 10 on was the second-biggest drop-off for any receiver last season. His yards-per-route-run average versus man coverage dropped from 2.46 to 1.45. He also wasn’t winning down the field. In the first nine games, he caught 27 of his 42 targets on passes that traveled more than 10 yards in the air, and he had 543 yards and six touchdowns on those downfield throws; he caught eight of 22 such targets for just 140 yards and one touchdown in his last 10 games.
Why did a four-time Pro Bowl, two-time All-Pro wideout who started his age-30 season red-hot completely crater down the stretch? Let’s consider some theories, from the mostly serious to the conspiracy corner:
- Diggs became a lower priority in the offense after Joe Brady replaced the fired Ken Dorsey as offensive coordinator following the Week 10 loss to the Broncos. Under Brady, the Bills showed a recommitment to the run game (the Bills’ early-down pass rate ranked 29th in the league after Brady took over, but was seventh under Dorsey) and greater variance in target distribution and snap counts among the pass catchers. Target shares for tight end Dalton Kincaid, running back James Cook, and slot receiver Khalil Shakir all spiked while Diggs’s share dropped from 31 to 27 percent.
- Diggs struggled quite a bit against some serious cornerback talent in Weeks 10-18 and the playoffs. Per PFF’s charting, Diggs caught just 10 of his 25 targets for 113 yards in seven games against Patrick Surtain, Ahmad Gardner, Darius Slay, James Bradberry, L’Jarius Sneed (twice), Stephon Gilmore, and Jalen Ramsey. Diggs couldn’t consistently beat press coverage from physical corners like Sneed, and his lack of separation down the field put him in more high-difficulty situations at the catch point. (His drop late in the fourth quarter of the Bills’ divisional-round loss to Kansas City is still a drop, however.)
- Just how bad was Diggs’s relationship with quarterback Josh Allen and the team? Obviously, the relationship ultimately ran its course, but could the toxicity that reportedly grew between Diggs, his quarterback, and the entire organization have affected his involvement in the offense or how effectively he worked within the organization? I mean, Caserio agreed to give Diggs all the leverage when he voided the remaining years on his contract in an effort to motivate him. That may seem to suggest that Diggs wasn’t always a banner employee in Buffalo, and similar rumors about his frustrations with the team leaked in Minnesota before he was traded to the Bills in 2020. It’s a broken record that’s still playing pretty loudly. To quote the very online Diggs, “You let em shenan once … they going shenanigan.”
- Diggs never missed a game due to injury last season, but he was a limited participant for two practices before playing 53 of the team’s 54 offensive snaps in the Week 10 loss to the Broncos. Could he have been more injured than what he and the Bills let on? Could it have lingered through the end of the season and into the playoffs, even if he wasn’t listed on the injury report again? But that also doesn’t really add up. Why wouldn’t the Bills and Diggs have communicated that he wasn’t 100 percent? Doing so would have helped Buffalo’s coaching staff answer the questions they were getting about his drop-off in production, and Diggs also stood to benefit because reporting the injury would have assuaged any public concerns about his decline.
- Diggs turned 30 in late November, after the Bills’ Week 12 loss to the Eagles. He didn’t score a touchdown the rest of the season. Anyone who has recently turned 30 (or is about to, as I am) can relate.
The right answer is potentially a combination of all these things. But how will Diggs’s one-year (for now) stint in Houston, productive or not, affect the Texans’ locker room dynamics and their young, exciting core of talent?
Can Diggs, like, chill out for a year to help C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans offense?
Stroud is the future of the Texans organization, the biggest reason they made a huge leap in 2023 and became a free agent draw in 2024. Wide receiver Nico Collins, who led the team in receiving and finished second in the league behind Tyreek Hill in yards per route run last season, is entering a contract year in 2024. Receiver Tank Dell, a third-round pick in 2023, was a sensation before he suffered a season-ending injury in Week 13. Offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik already started receiving head-coaching interviews after a phenomenal first year in the position. All four should be considered building blocks for the future; their roles in the offense and their off-field relationships are massively important to the team’s success.
But will that all go on the back burner if Diggs grows frustrated with his share of the targets, his own lack of production, or something else? If he winds up as the focal point of the offense and thrives, it’s a moot point. The bigger Diggs’s year, the more his price tag goes up when he’s off the Texans’ books next March. But if his decline over the back half of last season carries over into the fall, will Diggs still rerun the playbook to force Stroud and Slowik to funnel the offense through him?
It’s hard to imagine a situation in which Diggs doesn’t get what he wants on the field and still chooses to mentor Houston’s young core since he’s not even committed to the team beyond this upcoming season. If they traded a future second-rounder for a lackluster year from Diggs, it would be a miss for the Texans. If they traded that pick for a lackluster year from Diggs and a backslide in development for Stroud, Slowik, Collins, and Dell, it would be a disaster.
What is the range of outcomes for Diggs in Houston?
There’s a nonzero chance that Diggs will be an All-Pro receiver for the Texans this season, that he and Stroud will become best friends, that Slowik will get deep into his bag to dial up plays for him, that Collins and Dell will bow at his feet, and that the team will win the Super Bowl. This is an ideal scenario for all parties involved. There’s also a chance that Diggs will be good but not great on and off the field, that Houston will lose in the first or second round of the playoffs, and that he’ll be playing somewhere else in 2025. On the worst end of the spectrum, Diggs will become privately disgruntled, he’ll start firing off some ominous tweets, and the offense will stall out rather than taking a big leap forward.
Taking an admittedly aggressive and short-term swing on Diggs shouldn’t prevent the Texans from being competitive deep into the playoffs from now through the end of Stroud’s rookie contract and beyond. However, if Diggs disrupts what is objectively one of the brightest futures for a team right now just to sign a new contract with, say, the Chiefs in 2025, this will be quite the misstep for the Texans. Turn on tweet notifications for @stefondiggs to find out what happens next.
