If you thought the NFL’s offseason of blockbuster trades was finished, then you better buckle up. The Buffalo Bills finalized a trade to send star wide receiver Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans in exchange for draft pick compensation. The Bills also sent the Texans a 2024 sixth-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick for a 2025 second-round pick via the Minnesota Vikings.
Diggs is a four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver and began his career with the Minnesota Vikings in 2015. Shortly after, he had a four-year stint in Buffalo, and last season, the superstar player had arguably one of the worst seasons of his career with quarterback Josh Allen. In the first six games of the 2023-24 NFL season, he had 100 or more receiving yards in five of those games. However, slowly but surely, his numbers plummeted. From Week 10 to the playoffs, he scored one touchdown in that stretch and did not have a single 100 receiving yard game. From that perspective, what can he bring to Houston?
Reigning NFL Rookie of the Year quarterback C.J. Stroud may have just landed his new go-to guy. The Texans are already loaded with young talented receivers in Tank Dell and Nico Collins. In Diggs’ first season with the Bills, he led the league in receiving yards with 127 catches and 1,535 yards. In 2023-24, his least productive season, he still had 107 catches and 1,183 receiving yards.
The former Maryland Terrapin worked with numerous quarterbacks in Minnesota: Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Bradford, Shaun Hill for one game, Case Keenum, Kirk Cousins and Sean Mannion. In 136 career games with the Vikings and Bills, he has 810 receptions with 9,995 yards and 67 touchdowns. In the postseason, he’s played 14 games with 69 receptions, 909 receiving yards and four touchdowns.
Now, Diggs has left both the Vikings and Bills on bad terms. The question remains if he is the problem. He’s worked with two Pro Bowl quarterbacks in Cousins and Allen and recently, Diggs left a cryptic tweet, reading, “ready for whatever.” There were red flags early on with the Bills’ last training camp when he missed the start of mandatory minicamp.
The Texans are building something special in the AFC South. They signed both former Bengals running back Joe Mixon and re-signed tight end Dalton Schultz. The NFL community should tip their cap to Texans general manager Nick Caserio, as the moves he’s made this offseason show that the Texans are looking to build off last year’s successful season. They won their wild card game against the Cleveland Browns, marking their first playoff win since 2019. Previously, they hadn’t made the playoffs since 2020 and still managed to prove the entire league wrong. They simply were outperformed by the one seed Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round of the playoffs. But, after finishing in first place of the AFC South with a 10-7 record, the Texans are on the rise right now.
There should be high expectations now for the Texans because of all the offseason moves they made. What can Stroud do in his second year with this much talent on the offense? How will the addition of Diggs elevate Stroud’s game to a new level? He stacks up against the juggernaut quarterbacks in the AFC like Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Allen, Justin Herbert, etc.
The AFC was put on notice with the Diggs signing and other teams should be following the Texans’ blueprint.