Bills Receiver Stefon Diggs Next Challenge for Giants Secondary
Last Sunday, it didn’t take long for the New York Giants youthful secondary to realize they were facing one of the top wide receivers in the NFL in Miami's Tyreek Hill, and before he burnt them all to a breakaway touchdown that helped spark another dominant win for the Dolphins.
The perimeter cornerbacks like Deonte Banks and Tre Hawkins III will have to worry about slowing down their next No. 1 target that has highlighted the talent on the Buffalo Bills offense this season—wide receiver Stefon Diggs.
While he opened up his playing career in Minnesota for five seasons and didn’t fully blossom into a star receiver until the last two, Diggs shifted to Buffalo in 2020 and has elevated himself into a top-10 pass catcher and the elite weapon in their high-producing offense. Dating back to the 2018 season, he has surpassed the 1,000-yard receiving mark five consecutive times, including his career-high 127 receptions for 1,535 yards outing in 2020, and tallied 49 of his 64 career touchdowns.
In five games this fall, Diggs has placed himself sixth on the league’s receiving leaderboard with 39 receptions for 520 yards and five touchdowns and fastened himself as the top producer in the Bills’ wide receiving room. Four of those five games have seen at least six receptions for 100 yards, and three have garnered at least one score, projecting his total 2023 output to exceed the aforementioned career-high performance by a significant margin. (Link his page)
The one element of the 29-year-old’s game that makes him dangerous to any weak tackling unit is the ability to use his strength and athleticism to make things happen with the ball in his hands. Coming out of Maryland in 2015, Diggs wasn’t considered a very speedy receiver and thus couldn’t excel as a perimeter threat that hauls in the big catches to flip the tide of a game.
Those prognostications couldn't have been further off for a player who slipped to the fifth round of the 2015 draft. Diggs has played about three-quarters of his snaps in the outside receiver position in nine professional seasons and averaged 10.0 yards per catch in each successive campaign.
Per PFF, his average distance of target with the Bills has ranged from 9.8 to 15.6 yards (11.7 in 2023), and he’s used grit in the trenches to hold an average of 4.1 yards after the catch to tally over 3,000 career yards in that category.
In addition, Diggs has been very good at winning the battle for contested catches down the sideline, posting a contested catch rate of at least 50% in seven seasons (40% in 2023).
All these feats are a factor of his strength and aggressiveness in pursuing the football and his solid hands to secure it in the biggest moments. That’s not to say he’s had his case of the dropsies in recent seasons, but more often than not, he’s a veteran receiver who will earn the best of most defenders he runs routes against on Sunday.
Two weeks ago against Miami, Diggs went scorched earth on one of the better secondaries in the entire league, completing six of his seven targets for 120 yards and three touchdowns to help the Bills stomp out Miami in Orchard Park, 48-20, one week after Miami posted 70 points on the Denver Broncos in a historic contest for the organization.
The potential damage he’ll reap on Sunday night could be just as significant as he faces a Giants defense that’s looked horrific in their tackling and allowed a feast for premier wide receivers lining up against their inexperienced secondary.
After succumbing a humongous 524 yards of offense to the Dolphins last week—181 of which went to Miami’s top target in Tyreek Hill, who scored a 69-yard touchdown scamper in the third quarter to put the game out of reach–the Giants currently rank 19th in passing yards allowed, 30th in average yards per catch at 7.4, and 13th in passing touchdowns. They’ve buckled down closer to the red zone–where Diggs is frequently targeted–to rise to 20th in opponent red zone scoring percentage but still allow the other team to score some sort of points nearly half the time.
Diggs will likely line up against one of the team’s rookie corners in Banks or Hawkins III, based on how the secondary has been run under Wink Martindale this season. Banks has grown stronger in his pass coverage each week to shut down some of the deep threats put in front of him and steer the ball away from them in critical moments.
The same can’t be said for Hawkins III, who we saw get torched by Tyreek Hill in man coverage for the aforementioned touchdown and struggle to keep his coverage clean and free of penalties.
It remains to be seen what adjustments Martindale will make to account for this problem heading into the primetime battle with Diggs. If the Giants can't figure out how to clean up their defensive mistakes and take the No.1 target out of the game early on, it could be another long night for a unit that has fought hard to keep the team competitive in recent weeks.
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