Stefon Diggs is gone. Now what?

The Bills eat $31 million (!) to send their star wide receiver packing. They are not blameless for this relationship turning south, but the Super Bowl window? Still very smashable.

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Inside the brain of Stefon Diggs, this must’ve been cruel déjà vu. His Buffalo Bills were stringing together wins — six in a row — but wins alone rarely bring peace to alpha wide receivers with a history of volatility. Diggs went through all of this before. His source of rage in Minnesota was not Kirk Cousins five years ago. Diggs believed the offense was going prehistoric, at Mike Zimmer’s urging, and wanted the hell out of town.

Even the running backs central to both philosophy shifts were brothers, Dalvin and James Cook.

When the 2023 Bills transformed into a power-rushing operation — molly-wopping the Dallas Cowboys — Diggs was about as useful as DJ Khaled on the track. He was supplied bubble-screen scraps. He dropped a bomb vs. the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs. Now, he’s gone. Again. General manager Brandon Beane danced around the question of whether Diggs asked to be traded, citing a strong relationship with agent Adisa Bakari. It doesn’t take a stack of law degrees to surmise the 30-year-old likely requested a one-way ticket out of town. And it came at a damning cost. The Bills absorb $31.096 million in dead cap by moving Diggs — $4 million more than any non-QB in league history — and, even worse, they gift-wrapped the receiver to one of the AFC’s rising powers: the Houston Texans.

Buffalo also parts with a 2024 sixth-round pick, a 2025 fifth-round pick and gets a ’25 second-rounder in return.

Diggs broke the Internet on his way into town.

Diggs broke the Internet on his way out of town.

Now, everyone’s left to ask what the hell happened, who’s to blame and where the Bills go from here.

Three truths all exist in the same universe.

One, the Bills mishandled Diggs. All moody, erratic wide receivers require special treatment to some degree and everyone at One Bills Drive — from the owner to whoever’s responsible for picking up empty beer cans in the mud lot — knew this player arrived with baggage. Cryptic tweets and sideline outbursts are no surprise, no deal-breaker. This didn’t necessarily need to end two years into Diggs’ (massive) four-year extension. Two, a divorce isn’t the end of the world. Obits are being written en masse but the Bills’ window remains very smashable because it’s always smashable with this quarterback.

Above all? Beane’s next move as general manager is his most consequential since drafting that quarterback.

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Nobody should forget that Stefon Diggs served as this franchise’s nuclear energy source upon arrival in 2020. This rebuilt team fresh off a playoff appearance was in desperate need of a star who raised the bar. For everybody. As written then, the union was a perfect storm. Chad Hall might’ve heard what everybody else did, but the wide receivers coach set to work with Diggs every day didn’t reach out to one person for their opinion on the mercurial talent. The first time Hall met Diggs was the first day of training camp, and he was determined to form his own opinion.

“All you mostly hear is the negative shit. All the bad things,” Hall said late that 2020 season. “In the media, it’s all bad — ‘Oh, man, he’s a problem! No one could handle him up in Minnesota!’ Well, for me as a coach, good. There’s my challenge. My challenge is to get this guy in a comfortable situation where he’s loved and appreciated and it starts from there. You’ve got to build a relationship with these guys before anything else.”

Hall, an ’08 Air Force grad who served two years as a second lieutenant before his own pro career, embraced the Diggs effect in full.

He made it clear that Diggs was the voice everyone grew to follow in Year 1. Diggs injected the team with exactly what it needed: belief.

“He’s like a middle linebacker, man,” Hall added. “He’s your alpha, but he’s your damn dog. He’s tough as shit. He’s mean as shit. I’m a military guy and I’d want him in my foxhole.”

A franchise that hadn’t won a playoff game in 25 years suddenly featured one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL. Hall of Famer James Lofton put it perfectly: “This year for the Bills, it’s they have to play us. …. That’s the swagger Buffalo has finally gotten to.”

Diggs finished with 1,535 receiving yards that season. Two years later, he totaled 1,429. Both campaigns rank No. 1 and No. 2 in the 65-year history of the franchise. He was exactly what Allen needed at that point of the quarterback’s career. Videos of the two goofing around at practice became common fodder. Forget Trump and Biden — Allen/Diggs lawn signs took over Western New York.

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But if we’re going to knock the head coach for his defense’s playoff no-shows, the same logic should apply to Diggs. He too often disappeared in the biggest games.

Hall of Fame GM Bill Polian stressed the importance of valuing playoff performance in pushing the Indianapolis Colts over the top.

His temper tantrums became the norm, too. Former Bills receiver Isaiah McKenzie referred to himself as Diggs’ babysitter on our show at Go Long. Whenever the WR1 started losing his mind, like he did in a loss at Jacksonville, McKenzie was usually the one telling him to chill the F out. He joked that it was essentially in his contract to calm Diggs down. “Keep him level-headed,” McKenzie said then. “Because we’re going to need him. When things are going rough for him — when things aren’t going his way — he curses me out and we yell at each other. And at the end of the day, we hash it out.”

The world saw some of this on camera. Such as when an outstretched Diggs gave Allen grief on the sideline during a playoff loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. There was also everything we didn’t see. Such as when, as detailed to Go Long, Diggs yelled “Every f--king time! Every single f--king time!” inside the visitor’s locker room after Buffalo’s 13 Seconds debacle in KC. (He wasn’t alone in this sentiment, of course.)

Diggs loved feeding the drama with several veiled shots on Twitter and he infamously clashed with his head coach at minicamp last offseason. After the wideout left the building, McDermott told the press he was “very concerned.”

McKenzie explained Diggs to us this way:

“He’s a free bird. You just have to let him talk, let him ramble. It’s Stef! I will say this. With Stef, I respect Stef. You’ve got to respect Stef because when he steps between those lines, it’s not like he’s not doing his job. He’s doing his job and whatever he’s saying, that’s what he’s doing. But when it comes to tweets or him talking or him yelling at Josh, a coach, whatever it may be, it’s just Stef trying to get it out. He’s just getting it out. My fiancé told me this. She said, ‘Sometimes, I just want you to listen. I’m just talking. I don’t want you to say anything.’ That’s how you have to treat Stef.”

McKenzie estimated Diggs was right 90 percent of the time.

That other 10 percent? Diggs was “trippin,” he said, and veteran teammates would keep him in check. If Diggs said anything hypocritical, if he had zero reason to complain, McKenzie or another player would point it out. They’d inform Diggs that he crossed a line.

“That’s when you have to stop him right there and say, ‘Look, we’re not letting you say this. We can’t allow that. No, you can’t do that,’” McKenzie said.

Diggs’ final tweet fits within that 10 percent. The night before he was traded to Houston, Diggs replied to someone who said a “top-tier receiver” was not “essential” to Allen’s success. Diggs’ reply: “You sure?”

The Bills deemed their relationship with Diggs irreparable and will now watch him make plays for a team standing in their way of a Super Bowl. (Again, while swallowing $31 million.) The Texans are loading up around their franchise quarterback, C.J. Stroud. Diggs joins the freakish Nico Collins, Tank Dell, Noah Brown, Dalton Schultz and running back Joe Mixon, who hinted himself that Diggs demanded out of Buffalo weeks ago. I was told the same thing this week by one of Diggs’ former teammates. (Not McKenzie.) “He was done with Sean,” said this player, which aligns with what we reported in our December series. Back then, one ex-Bill said bluntly that Diggs did not like it when McDermott questioned his commitment to the team. “Diggs wants to be great for Diggs,” the player said. “And when you question that, Diggs gets pissed off. Because that’s testing his integrity and what he wants to be. And I definitely think that’s where Sean f--ks up.”

Obviously, there are many ways to interpret all of this.

A head coach in charge of 53 players must always make tough decisions with the betterment of those 53 players in mind. McDermott surely values team above individual — wise. Much like Sean Payton convincing Denver Broncos ownership to take on an $85M cap hit to extract Russell Wilson with stainless-steel tongs from the building, the fact that the Bills will absorb this blow to the checkbook speaks to how awful this situation was behind closed doors. After all, the Bills could’ve dared Diggs to sit on the bench all season if he was unhappy. Instead, they opted to eliminate a distraction entirely… two years after inking him to a four-year, $104 million extension.  

Still, a middle ground was attainable. The NFL is a star-driven business and contenders always bend, bend and bend a little more for those stars to win championships. Tales of Diggs’ demise are grossly overstated. Through the first nine games — before McDermott emphasized the run — Diggs had 834 yards and seven touchdowns. He was on pace for a career season.

This is exactly what Herm Edwards harped on. It’s impossible to get to know everyone. As Tony Dungy’s right-hand man in Tampa Bay, Edwards learned that head coaches need to do everything in their power to foster authentic relationships with three or four personalities on the team. “We all know who they are and everybody’s got ‘em on their team,” Edwards said. “It’s like, ‘How do you handle that guy?’ The head coach has to step in and say, ‘Look, these are my guys.’”

It’s nice that McKenzie and co. were able to police the locker room. But every team has a few players that require more attention from the head coach. This is arguably Andy Reid’s greatest strength. I’ll never forget Sammy Watkins — a man who believes in demons, etheric bodies and astral realms — praising Andy Reid as a father figure in our unforgettable conversation. To another wild extreme, we all saw how Phil Jackson was able to harness the best out of Dennis Rodman on “The Last Dance.”

McDermott and Diggs were oil and water.

Diggs was not winning this power struggle. In explaining what led to the final call during his presser on Wednesday, it was also telling that Beane referenced conversations at the “highest levels” of the organization.” Terry Pegula clearly has McDermott’s back.  

Honestly, I thought both sides would find a way — as Edwards says — to “get to the field.” They did not. Clearly, the Diggs era ran its course.

But this is also true: If the Bills are ever going to get over the title hump, they’ll need another star at wide receiver and there’s a good chance that star arrives with spunk. Most do.

With a fresh slate, it’ll be imperative for McDermott to heed Edwards’ advice.

Which brings us to the GM’s most crucial draft since selecting a wild stallion of a quarterback out of Wyoming.

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Give Beane an A+ for honesty. “I mean, are we better today?” he asked himself on Wednesday. “Probably not.”

Khalil Shakir is the only returning wideout who caught a pass on the Bills last season. In a dream world, he’s the No. 3 option. The Bills signed Curtis Samuel and Mack Hollins in free agency. They return Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox at tight end. James Cook rushed for 1,000+ yards last season. It’s now point-blank obvious that Beane needs to give those taxpayers funding the new stadium exactly what they’ve been clamoring for: Wide Receivers. He may have no choice but to use that extra second-rounder in ’25 to move up from the Bills’ No. 28 overall pick. After the Chiefs slid up to poach Washington corner Trent McDuffie in ‘22 — and after a WR run Picks No. 20, 21, 22 and 23 last spring — working up the board for a starting receiver like LSU’s Brian Thomas, Texas’ Adonai Mitchell or South Carolina’s Xavier Legette may be required.

The Bills likely juke hard one direction or the other with whoever they choose next at wideout.

We’ve seen this go both ways.

Those Vikings selected the best wide receiver in the sport with the 22^nd overall pick acquired from Buffalo in the Diggs trade. (Fun Fact: Buffalo realistically could have Patrick Mahomes at QB and Justin Jefferson at WR.) San Francisco took Brandon Aiyuk 25th overall in the same draft. In 2022, Pittsburgh drafted George Pickens all the way down at No. 52 and, in 2023, the Vikings poached Jordan Addison at No. 23. More than ever, rookie receivers are ready to ball out Day 1.

This could also backfire. The Tennessee Titans tried getting too cute in trading A.J. Brown to the Philadelphia Eagles for the 18th overall pick. They didn’t want to pay Brown big money, selected Treylon Burks and have been chasing the next Brown ever since.

Of course, there’s one major difference. Ryan Tannehill, Malik Willis and Will Levis are not Josh Allen.

Beane expects a “variety of guys” to fuel the passing game.

“I think we do have a lot of confidence in our offense, in the other players, whether it’s receivers, the two tights, the backs,” Beane said. “And, listen, we don’t play games until September. I would hope you know by now I’m going to turn over every stone, and our staff is, to continue to look to add depth and competition to all those rooms, so that when it’s time to play that we have a team we’re proud of and that’s going to go out there and give us a chance to win.”

He's correct. Hit on wide receiver and this loss won’t sting nearly as much.

Expect the Bills to double or even triple up at the position. It’s exceptionally deep. Let’s also not forget the Kansas City Chiefs’ wide receivers stunk up stadiums all regular season before winning the Super Bowl. Or that the Green Bay Packers were one play away from the NFC Championship with all first- and second-year receiving targets.

What is unequivocally true now is that the state of affairs between the Bills and Diggs was far worse than anyone let on. Even Allen jabbed anyone who claimed there was bad blood with Diggs. The media’s a convenient punching bag. There’s always a different NFL behind the curtain.

By finally severing ties, the Bills put all the pressure on themselves to chart a new path to the Super Bowl.

Diggs helped a young team — and young quarterback — learn to believe and that young quarterback is now one of the best in the sport. As long as Josh Allen is permitted to be Josh Allen, the 2024 Buffalo Bills will absolutely contend. He proved yet again last season that he’s capable of throwing the team on his back via air and ground. Mahomes won two rings without Tyreek Hill. Losing Diggs is no death sentence. But it’s on Beane and the scouts to ensure whoever replaces Diggs can also toast a cornerback with a flurry of cuts off the line of scrimmage, can also haul in that crucial third-down catch over the middle and — if Allen heaves one 60+ yards downfield against KC? — maybe this receiver makes the play.

Some of Beane’s gambles have paid off. (See: Allen, Josh.)

Some have not. (See: Miller, Von.)

He can’t miss this time.

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