Why Stefon Diggs Will Be Playing in Buffalo in 2023

His contract makes it almost impossible for the Bills to move him. Plus, more on Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Justin Jefferson and Odell Beckham Jr. in this week’s NFL notes.

• Before you conjure up any trade destinations for Stefon Diggs, it’s probably important to point out that, for three specific reasons, it’s highly unlikely the Bills even entertain the idea.

One, they’ve leveraged contracts to invest in this year. Josh Allen, Von Miller and Diggs, himself, all had their deals restructured, and free-agent Leonard Floyd did a contract with a base value of $7 million that had void years attached to it—void years that will lead to a dead-money bill in 2024. So taking a team in a position to compete for a championship and robbing it of its top receiver wouldn’t make much sense.

Two, due to the restructure, trading Diggs would put the Bills in an awful spot both cap- and cash-wise. From a cash standpoint, the restructure means Diggs has already earned $22.745 million for this year from Buffalo, which is all of his money, save for a minimum base salary, and about a half million dollars in an offseason workout bonus and per-game roster bonuses.

Conor Orr: Bills need to fix Stefon Diggs situation

That’d essentially mean the Bills paying for him to play for another team in 2023. That’s not going to happen after giving him $33.745 million in new money on the new contract he signed last year, while getting only a year of service from him for doing that deal (the first new year of that contract is ’24. So, you’d fall a year short of getting to the extension years). On the cap, they’d save about $1 million this year, but have a $22.2 million dead-money charge on next year’s cap.

Trading Diggs would put the Bills in an awful spot both cap- and cash-wise :: Jamie Germano / USA TODAY NETWORK

Three, a happy quarterback equals a happy team. Based on the investment the team’s made in just about every way for Allen, leaving No. 17 shorthanded just ahead of training camp would be a pretty bad way to do business with your quarterback. And everyone heard Tuesday just how Allen feels about Diggs.

So I’m gonna go ahead and bet Diggs is a Bill in 2023. And based on what we’re seeing here, and the history of these sorts of situations, things may get a little murkier after that.

• Hearing that New England’s defense had its way with the offense Tuesday reminded me to touch on an interesting aspect of how coach Bill Belichick is building that unit.

Nearly a decade ago, the coach loaded up on hybrid linebacker-edge guys, who could play both as a rusher and off the ball (Dont’a Hightower, Jamie Collins, Kyle Van Noy, etc.), to allow for more disguise in their rush as offenses became more aggressive in getting the ball out quickly. And those guys were a big part of the second phase of the New England dynasty.

Now, they seem to be loading up on safety-linebacker hybrids, with Kyle Dugger, Jabrill Peppers, Adrian Phillips and third-round rookie Marte Mapu (who’s getting a lot of first-team opportunities already) all roughly fitting into that box.

So what gives? Well, drafting Mapu did protect the team in the case it loses Dugger, who’s going into a contract year. But there’s also a schematic benefit to having all these guys—it makes it easier to deal with teams such as Kansas City that run the ball out of lighter personnel. The idea of running out of 10- or 11-personnel—for the offense—is to put defensive backs in a position where they have to shed blocks and tackle. The Patriots, to answer that, now have a lot of defensive backs who are big and sturdy enough to do those things.

Stroud and Young could potentially face each other Oct. 29 when Stroud’s Texans take on Young’s Panthers :: John David Mercer/USA TODAY Sports (Stroud); Marvin Gentry/USA TODAY Sports (Young)

• There’ll be a good juxtaposition over the summer in how teams approach the handling of their young quarterback, with what the Panthers and Texans are doing with the first two picks in the draft. Carolina has named Bryce Young its starter, and Houston is saying C.J. Stroud will compete in camp with Davis Mills for the job. So on one hand, you have a team trying to feed its rookie reps. And on the other, you have a team trying to push its guy.

The truth is, it can work either way, and 2020 was a good example of that. The Bengals basically had Joe Burrow as their starter from the jump that offseason, and he had a fantastic first year that might’ve ended with Offensive Rookie of the Year honors had he not torn his ACL. Conversely, Justin Herbert was behind Tyrod Taylor for that spring and summer with the Chargers, and wound up winning the award in Burrow’s place.

Also, I think each team’s decision-making here matches each team’s progress at this point. The Panthers have a roster ready to win right now, so having their best option at quarterback as ready as possible for Week 1 makes sense. The Texans, conversely, are still building their roster up, and that gives them a little more flexibility to make Stroud earn it.

• There's a good reason for Justin Jefferson to not waste the time and money he would be holding out—in his case, there’s no disagreement between team and player on his value. The Vikings know they have arguably the best receiver in the league—an elite player who doesn’t turn 24 until Friday—and he’s going to be paid as such.

How they structure a deal to make him the highest-paid receiver in football history remains to be seen. That he’ll become that shouldn’t really be in question.

• Darius Slay’s magnanimous approach to the Eagles’ hire of Matt Patricia as senior defensive assistant—he told the Detroit Free Press this week they’ve been “cordial” with each other—is not something that Philly’s star corner cooked up yesterday. The team was well aware of the history there, and all of it was addressed ahead of Patricia’s hire.

And for what it’s worth, word is Patricia’s been a really good resource for new Eagles defensive coordinator Sean Desai. The two have never worked together but have a bunch of common friends, and their philosophies have meshed nicely thus far.

• The Jets’ addition of Adrian Amos is another example of the edge Aaron Rodgers is bringing in player acquisition for the team, and it’s not just because the two played together in Green Bay. Amos is going to New York on short money, in the ninth year of his career, feeling like—after playing on a great Bears defense as a young player, and competing for a championship as a Packer—the Jets are the team to chase a ring with to cap his career.

Considering how last year ended, it’s kind of mind-blowing that the Jets would be a team a guy such as Amos would do that with. Then again, no one was going to Tampa to pursue a Lombardi Trophy in 2019, either. And just as the Buccaneers had this advantage the past three years, this dynamic gives the Jets a new way to build depth and experience into their roster.

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Rodgers has done his part recruiting former teammates to the Jets, while Saleh has rewarded his team's hard work by giving them an extra week off before training camp :: Chris Pedota, NorthJersey.com/USA TODAY Network (Rodgers); John Jones/USA TODAY Sports (Saleh)

• While we’re on the Jets, they’re off for the summer already, and coach Robert Saleh and I had a good talk the other day on why he could cut his offseason program a week short. Yes, it was about rewarding the guys for good work over two months. But there was also some sports science worked into it, with the team set to report to camp a week early, since it’s in this year’s Hall of Fame Game.

“The work’s never done,” Saleh said. “But we’ve had a productive offseason; they’ve been here for three months. And the season is grueling. That window, there’s a science behind the whole thing where you give guys a week off. So they’re gonna take this week off, where if you work another week and then take a week off, that’s not enough time to get back in shape for training camp. So if you do it properly and give them the week off, there’s actually science behind the whole thing. It’s not just, hey, let them go have this week off.

“It’s so they can pick back up and use these next 40 days to get in shape so we can have a healthy training [camp]. So there’s a theory behind it, and right now, for us, what was more important, the extra reps or the health in training camp? We chose health in training camp.”

• Odell Beckham Jr. was back on the field in full practicing for the first time in 16 months this week, and it’ll be interesting seeing the results the new Ravens receiver gets from taking all that time to come back off the ACL he tore in Super Bowl LVI. Last year, we saw Chase Young and Tre’Davious White have some bumps trying to return with reconstructed knees after tearing their ACL during the 2022 season. So we’ll see whether the extra time benefits Beckham.

“It feels good to be able to get out of bed and not feel pain,” Beckham told reporters. “It feels good to feel like if I need to take off running right now, I can take off running. It’s been a long journey this time around.”

Beckham, of course, first tore the ACL during the 2021 season, and his return from that one was so tenuous that the Rams felt like, upon signing him in November ’22, his ability to get through that season unscathed was iffy. That concern ended up being warranted, with the knee blowing up again three months later.

• Bengals tackle Jonah Williams has long planned to show up for the team’s mandatory minicamp—so his arrival earlier this week, as he works his way back from knee surgery, didn’t catch anyone by surprise. But it’s good news for Cincinnati nonetheless, allowing the Bengals to slot him in at right tackle, with La’el Collins’s status for September still up in the air. Once Collins comes back, and with new left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. in place, Cincinnati now has more depth, and options, up front, than they’ve had in the Burrow era.

Williams conceded Tuesday what’s been discussed between him and the team, which is that the communication on the Brown signing, which precipitated his move from left to right tackle, was at the root of the issue in March, when he lodged his trade request.

• And to finish up, what Burrow said very matter-of-factly on Tuesday about Patrick Mahomes—asked who the best quarterback in the world is, he answered, “I don’t think there’s any argument, it’s Pat”—is another good window into who the Bengals quarterback is, and why Cincinnati will sleep well at night giving him whatever he wants monetarily here over the next couple of months.

Burrow’s gotten the better of Mahomes in three of their past four meetings, but he doesn’t measure success that way. He measures it in championships, and Mahomes has the edge there. And while it’s a small thing, I think it’s notable that, despite all the success he’s had over his first three years, he’s not letting himself off the hook for that one, and also how easily he got that point across (like it was obvious that he’s still chasing Mahomes).

The Bengals are in good hands.