Vikings’ biggest Stefon Diggs regret should be 2019, not trade

Diggs is headed to the AFC title game, adding to questions about his time in Minnesota

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What a Saturday for Minnesota Vikings fans. If you were hoping to sit back and enjoy some playoff football without having all sorts of emotions about your favorite franchise, boy did the NFL’s Saturday slate not do you any favors. 

First the Green Bay Packers demolished the Los Angeles Rams on the back of a brilliant performance by Aaron Rodgers and then Stefon Diggs (and Les Frazier) advanced to the AFC Championship game. 

Making it all the worse is the fact that the Rams were everything the Vikings have been and will probably continue to try to be. They had the No. 1 defense in the NFL and use gobs of play-action passes to put their good-but-limited quarterback in position to succeed. In basically a reenactment of the Vikings’ 2019 playoff showing, L.A. got a really cool road win on the road in the opening round and then was overmatched the following week. 

After Rodgers celebrated on frozen Lambeau turf, Diggs and the Bills beat the Ravens while literally never running the ball. If they had been asked exactly how to rub the Vikings’ nose in it, that would have been the way. And if you were trying hard to ignore it, Al Michaels made sure to bring up Diggs’s roots in Minnesota enough times for everyone to get the picture. 

What Vikings fans are clinging to these days is that they got Justin Jefferson out of the deal that sent Diggs to Buffalo. Jefferson is marvelous and more affordable. Better for the immediate future, in fact. But it isn’t the trade that the Vikings should truly regret. It’s the fact that they had Diggs and a top-five defense in 2019 and still stuck to a run-first offense that limited their ceiling during the regular season and cost them any type of route to the Super Bowl. 

Heck, against the 49ers in the divisional round, Diggs caught a bomb for a touchdown to open the game and then never saw the ball again as the Vikings ran for 3-yard gains with Dalvin Cook over and over. He was targeted just five times in the offensive no-show in Santa Clara. 

It’s clear now that 2019 was their last shot and they let it slip away in part because they refused to listen to their best player. They threw to him 94 times in 2019 and finished with a decent passing offense. Buffalo threw to him 166 times and finished with an elite passing offense. 

Side note: We’re Bucs and Chiefs wins away from the top four teams in passing Expected Points Added ending up in the Championship games. Having a decent passing offense wasn’t good enough. 

Diggs, who led the NFL in receiving this year, told ESPN earlier this season that not only was his issue with the Vikings’ offensive philosophy but the fact that nobody would talk it out with him. He used a rather uncomfortable metaphor that ended with “and tell me it’s raining” to point out that he wasn’t getting answers for why the Vikings wouldn’t build their offense around him. 

If he had gone to Buffalo and been his usual statistical self and their team was good, it wouldn’t say much about Minnesota. But Buffalo made it the perfect “I told you so” offense, built solely to throw the ball to Diggs. And suddenly, like Case Keenum before him, Josh Allen’s completion percentage shot up and his QB rating when targeting Diggs finished above 120. So he was Mahomes when throwing to Diggs. 

What if the Vikings had done the same in 2019? Could they have beaten San Fran or changed the outcomes in key losses to the Bears, Packers and Chiefs that cost them a home playoff game if they had put everything on Diggs? He had 24 targets in those four losses. That’s two games worth for him in Buffalo. 

Even in the playoff win against the Saints, the Vikings allowed Drew Brees to come back in the game partly because they handed off over and over rather than putting a dagger in New Orleans. By the way, when Buffalo was up two scores on Saturday, they threw it to Diggs. 

You might argue that they tried all that in 2018 but that would be conveniently forgetting some facts of the matter. In 2018 Kirk Cousins was one of the top passers in the NFL until one ugly afternoon in New York when Mike Zimmer decided that John DeFilippo wasn’t running the football enough. It became a sticking point and then an edict and then one of the reasons DeFilippo was fired. 

Cousins had games against Green Bay, Los Angeles and Philadelphia that were the type we’re seeing now from Buffalo. But Cousins’s penchant for the strip sack or interception seemed to scare them away from putting things on his shoulders. Ironically Cousins overcame turnovers in several games this year by throwing to Justin Jefferson. 

Again, the trade will be looked at like a win-win. Nobody is giving back Jefferson, even if Diggs ends up with a ring. But it’s the fact that Diggs might win a ring by doing exactly what Diggs said the Vikings should do on offense that reflects so badly on the process that the Vikings used during their final chance with the Everson Griffens and Linval Josephs of the previous era. 

You also can’t help wonder about next year when things are better on defense and maybe another guard is added to the mix. Are they going to be the Rams and get a nice playoff win or shoot for higher? 

I am well aware, by the way, that you’re all tired of hearing about Diggs. This isn’t to pour salt in Saturday’s wounds, it’s only to wonder out loud whether listening to Diggs could have changed their fate during Cousins’s time in Minnesota and to pontificate about what it all means going forward. 

I promise that’s all there is to be said on the subject. That is, of course, unless he takes his team farther than the Vikings every allowed him to take them. 

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