Sean McDermott indicates the Bills will make more an effort to get Stefon Diggs involved. It’s about time.
Conservatively, Diggs is one of the best dozen receivers in the game. He might be one of the top 5. But he’s oddly disappeared from the offense.
Diggs in his first nine games caught 70 passes for 834 yards and 7 TDs. He had four straight 100-yard games at one point.
In his last seven, he’s caught only 30 passes for 262 yards, with one touchdown.
If we’re using PPR scoring, Diggs averaged 21.7 points in his first nine games, with at least 13.6 points in all of them. He’s averaged only 8.9 points in his last seven, with fewer than 9 points in all but one of them.
Diggs has averaged 55 fewer yards in his last seven games, and 3 fewer yards per catch.
| STEFON DIGGS, WEEK BY WEEK | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opponent | Tar | Rec | Yds | Avg | TD |
| at N.Y. Jets | 13 | 10 | 102 | 10.2 | 1 |
| Las Vegas | 7 | 7 | 66 | 9.4 | 0 |
| at Washington | 12 | 8 | 111 | 13.9 | 0 |
| Miami | 7 | 6 | 120 | 20.0 | 3 |
| Jacksonville | 11 | 8 | 121 | 15.1 | 1 |
| New York Giants | 16 | 10 | 100 | 10.0 | 0 |
| at New England | 12 | 6 | 58 | 9.7 | 1 |
| Tampa Bay | 12 | 9 | 70 | 7.8 | 0 |
| at Cincinnati | 7 | 6 | 86 | 14.3 | 1 |
| Denver | 5 | 3 | 34 | 11.3 | 0 |
| New York Jets | 8 | 4 | 27 | 6.8 | 0 |
| at Philadelphia | 11 | 6 | 74 | 12.3 | 1 |
| at Kansas City | 11 | 4 | 24 | 6.0 | 0 |
| Dallas | 5 | 4 | 48 | 12.0 | 0 |
| at L.A. Chargers | 8 | 5 | 29 | 5.8 | 0 |
| New England | 7 | 4 | 26 | 6.5 | 0 |
McDermott says Diggs is healthy.
The slump started one game before the team switched offensive coordinators. That’s probably a contributing reason. But McDermott talks as if this is just an aberrating that Diggs will work through – that he and Josh Allen will get it rolling again.
“It’s just Josh going through his reads and going through his progressions,” McDermott said. “He hasn’t been as involved maybe as much as we would have liked the last couple games.”
“He’s a big factor for us. He brings so much energy and vibe to our team and to our offense,” McDermott said. “He’s a valued member of our team and particularly our offense and we’re going to need him down the stretch here.”
Sunday night the Bills will play at Miami, with the division title on the line. And they’ll be facing a defense that just lost cornerback Xavien Howard. I would think this looks like a game where we’ll see numbers from Diggs that are more in line with his usual production.
—Ian Allan