Inside the Stefon Diggs-Buffalo Bills divorce

IT WAS NEITHER the biggest nor the most memorable play of theBuffalo Bills' 2023 season. Ahead 10-7 late in the second quarter at the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 12, Josh Allen took the third-and-6 shotgun snap from the 13-yard line, glanced left, then to the right slot, where he knew exactly which player he would find. Stefon Diggs had found a tiny void in the Eagles' zone at the goal line, which is where Allen's necessarily low and perfect throw found him, sliding in the rain between safetyKevin Byardand linebacker Zach Cunningham. Touchdown.

The Bills would blow a double-digit fourth-quarter lead and lose in overtime. And, as it turns out, that would be Diggs' 37th and final touchdown as a Bill. The 30-year-old wide receiver with the NFL's most receptions from 2020 to 2023 would see his opportunities dwindle, even as his team went on a five-game winning streak that took it from 6-6 after the Eagles loss to the AFC East title. Four months and one week after Diggs slid through the rain in Philly, the Bills traded him to the Houston Texans, taking on $31 million of dead salary cap money to move him -- the highest known dead cap charge for a wide receiver ever.

Where it went wrong between Diggs and the Bills is not a question that yields a single answer from more than a dozen team, front office and industry sources ESPN contacted for this story. The player is famously mercurial. The team's level of patience with his personality ebbed and flowed. The offense was headed in a different direction. The ratio of the impact of these three causes on Diggs' exit depends on who's doing the talking.

And now comes a reunion between Diggs and Buffalo (Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, CBS) that will likely be professional on the surface. What lies beneath, only the principals can say. Diggs declined comment for this story, as did the Bills.

But to be sure, this divorce did not come out of nowhere.

"Tremendous player," a team source said. "But the offense didn't need him anymore."

THE 2020 DEAL that sent Diggs from Minnesota to Buffalo was just what Allen and the Bills needed. Multitalented Allen was heading into his third season and coming off a promising playoff year in 2019 but lacked a true alpha at receiver. Diggs filled that vacuum, establishing his place immediately in the Bills' culture during the COVID-altered offseason of 2020 and setting the tone every day with his competitiveness and work ethic. If every receiver got one rep, Diggs wanted five. Diggs has been described by several sources as well-liked by teammates, sentiments that were apparent from his early days in Buffalo. Whether organizing a Thanksgiving turkey drive in the Buffalo area or playing catch with fans pregame, Diggs made his presence and example felt within the community and the locker room.

Diggs' arrival directly correlated with Allen's vault into the top-tier quarterback conversation and the Bills' transition from fringe playoff team to true contender. Though some of Allen's gains can be explained by the natural maturation of a young quarterback, Allen's improved numbers after Diggs' arrival in Total QBR (from 50 to 71), completion percentage (56% to 66%) and touchdown-to-interception ratio (from 30 touchdowns, 21 interceptions to 137 touchdowns, 57 interceptions) were undeniably tied to the duo's compatibility.

For his part, Diggs' star rose immediately with Allen as his quarterback -- he was named a first-team All-Pro in 2020.

The two appeared to have buddy-cop movie chemistry early on, sharing secret handshakes and laughs on the field. Allen went out of his way to praise Diggs in front of every microphone, heralding his No. 1 wideout's impact on the field and his friendship off it.

"I've been a big believer in off-field relationships paying dividends on the field. I think that ours kind of speaks volumes," Allen said in 2021 about the Diggs relationship. "We get to hang out with each other a lot, and develop those types of bonds and relationships, and it shows up on the field."

In time, frustration would show up on the field as well, tied to the inability of the Bills to break through on the biggest stage. Late in an ugly 27-10 home loss to the Bengals in the 2022 playoffs, Diggs -- limited to four catches on the day -- could be seen animatedly addressing Allen on the sideline.

He explained himself in a series of tweets that only deepened the intrigue:

"Want me to be okay with losing ? Nah ... Want me to be okay with our level of play when it's not up to the standard ? Nah ... It's easy to criticize my reaction more than the result," Diggs tweeted.

The controversy ignited anew at the subsequent mandatory minicamp when coach Sean McDermott told reporters he was "very concerned" about Diggs not being present.

The next day, McDermott clarified that he "gave Stef permission to get some space" after a conversation between the coach and star receiver. Diggs returned to practice that day.

Theories about the core issue abounded at Bills team headquarters that day. One team source believed that Diggs had grown frustrated with the late-season losses and had suggestions about improving the overall approach to winning that went beyond the specifics of his own role and that his delivery on those thoughts might have gone poorly. When asked about that theme, a source close to Diggs said the receiver "got to the point where he figured, I'm here and they know what I can do, but if we're losing, let me help."

"He's super smart, and if you sugarcoat it with him and are not 100%, he'll see through it," the source said of Diggs' approach. "And he remembers everything you say."

A separate team source cited the 2022 postseason departure of the team's receivers coach, Chad Hall, as a point of contention. Diggs is close to Hall, whose contract was up after the 2022 season. Jacksonville offered him a promotion from wide receivers coach to passing game coordinator, which he accepted. The Bills replaced him with veteran coach Adam Henry.

Regardless of Diggs' intentions or the team's handling of them, what a team source said felt like unspoken tension between the two sides for a while had gone public.

The issue appeared to cool down after that, as Diggs remained the focal point of the offense, with 73 catches through the first 10 games of the 2023 season. But Buffalo lost five of those games, and a 24-22 upset at the hands of Russell Wilson and the Broncos turned up the heat around the whole team.

Dallas Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs, Diggs' younger brother, tweeted "Man 14 Gotta get up outta there," during the Monday night loss, a comment Stefon attempted to separate himself from later that week (saying, "I'm not responsible for how other people feel"). By then, McDermott had fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey and promoted quarterbacks coach Joe Brady to the interim OC role.

Brady immediately broke from Dorsey's system that had rushed about 25 times per game the previous season. Brady instead called 155 rushing plays in the first four games (38.8 per game), culminating in a blowout of the Cowboys in which the Bills ran 49 times. It was the team's most running plays in a game since 2017.

More importantly, it showed that an offense so reliant on Allen to run and throw -- often to Diggs when he put it in the air -- could adapt. Diggs' four catches for 48 yards on five targets against Dallas might have looked like a minimal contribution within the box score, but what the tally said held significance beyond the numbers.

"For a while it was, 'No way we can play without this dude,'" a team source who was on the scene that night said about Diggs. "But I thought to myself, 'Oh, maybe we can do this without him.'"

Diggs remained a primary option, but his targets dipped from 102 over the first 10 games (10.2 per game) to 75 over the final nine (8.3 per game).

Team sources say the run-oriented attack wasn't about Diggs but more about maximizing the overall personnel, involving several pass-catching options and setting more of a physical tone. But it signified a page turn in philosophy and preference.

"We still attempted to try to get him the ball," a Bills personnel source said. "It's more about philosophy, [Brady and McDermott's] brand, what's most effective holistically for the offense. Teams know where you're going in terms of go-to guys. You have to spread that thing out, have flexibility."

Meanwhile, Diggs wasn't saying much publicly -- he was rarely available to the media at all -- even if his frustration was privately mounting. The public story was about defenses doing more to take Diggs away than they had at any previous point in his Buffalo tenure.

"I'm gonna be honest, it's frustrating," Diggs said before the win over the Cowboys. "I got to do a lot of things to get open, and then a lot of things got to go right for me to get the ball. Y'all know how much of a competitor I am, and I like to play at a high level, and I always want it to happen, and even if it doesn't, when it doesn't materialize, I definitely get a little discouraged at a moment, but then I got to shake back, cause I always look at it like, my team still needs me."

Diggs and Allen remained cordial and professional through the philosophical shift, team sources said.

There wasn't much more Diggs could say within the building, or in his public comments. The Bills were winning again. But his chance to switch uniforms for the third time in five years was looming.

FROM AFAR, A TEAMin the NFC North had seen this script before.

"It all felt very familiar," a high-ranking Vikings source from the Diggs era said.

Coaches and scouts on the Minnesota staff during Diggs' tenure there often refer to the "Diggs experience," a roller coaster of on-field brilliance and off-field irritability that can elicit discomfort within the football building.

After Minnesota drafted Diggs out of Maryland in 2015 -- one of the notable fifth-round steals in modern NFL history -- the team learned his competitive side could lead to frustration. The Vikings went to the playoffs three times during Diggs' five years with the team, all under head coach (and noted Diggs fan) Mike Zimmer, and never finished with a losing record. But the very thing that made Diggs great -- his belief that getting him the ball would help the team -- was something Minnesota had to manage on game day and throughout the week.

"He needs to have someone he can talk to, listening to his concerns, work through what was bothering him, recognizing him as a voice," a Vikings source who directly observed Diggs' tenure there said.

Multiple Vikings sources said that although the franchise considered Diggs' desire to maximize his offensive impact to be mostly a positive, the team had to work to ensure it didn't turn toxic within the building. Vikings brass spent significant time talking through issues with Diggs, realizing he just needed to vent sometimes.

Diggs was known to be forceful when he did. And he shared the wide receivers room with another alpha, Adam Thielen, who also wanted the ball.

To give then-quarterback Kirk Cousins peace on the sideline during games, coaches once situated the Vikings receivers apart from the quarterbacks and closer to the defensive benches, an ex-Vikings source said.

"It can be a lot," the source said. "He might throw his helmet. He will wear on your quarterback. But find me a premier receiver that's not a diva. ... And he works incredibly hard. That's why coaches love him."

After five years that included a pair of 1,000-yard seasons and the Diggs-authored "Minneapolis Miracle" but also $200,000 in fines for unexcused absences from practices and meetings, the team and Diggs decided to part ways in what a Vikings-era source described as a mutual decision between player and team. (A separate team source made it clear that Diggs wanted out.) Minnesota dealt Diggs as part of a package that sent Buffalo's first-round 2020 choice to the Vikings, a pick the team used to draft Justin Jefferson at 22nd overall.

That source did not recall Buffalo asking for advice on how to manage Diggs' personality in the trade process.

"You always have to worry about how he feels," a Bills team source said. "That wears on a locker room."

In 2023, four seasons since the trade from Minnesota to the Bills, the daily realities of Diggs weren't confined to the football side of the building in Buffalo. The Bills dealt with a minor public relations crisis in September 2023 when a team employee who works as a reporter for the Bills' website was heard on a livestream saying, "There's no control over Stefon Diggs. Dude's gonna do what he wants to do. He'll look in my face and say f--- you. ... That's how he treats everybody."

The employee later apologized, and Diggs reacted to the controversy by tweeting: "The media or fans may confuse my competitiveness that they witness on the field as who I am as a person. But off the field I'd never treat anyone how she described & have never said anything remotely close to that to her."

The controversy abated, and the season continued. More than a year later, the team employee remains a reporter for the Bills' website. The organization would come to a different decision about Diggs.

AS HE FIELDED questions at his season-ending news conference, Bills general manager Brandon Beane was asked about Diggs' production down the stretch, including a three-catch, 21-yard performance in a divisional round playoff loss at the Chiefs.

"Stef's ... a No. 1 receiver. I firmly believe that, not wavering off of that," Beane said. Left unspoken in that evaluation was how prominently Diggs factored into the Bills' plans.

Things were changing in Buffalo. Young offensive playmakers, including tight end Dalton Kincaid and running back James Cook, were growing in stature. The Bills faced roughly a $50 million salary cap deficit, forcing hard roster decisions. Word spread among player agents that Buffalo would be parting with high-priced, aging veterans, in part to brace for ballooning cap hits on Allen's $258 million contract. Center Mitch Morse, corner Tre'Davious White and safety Jordan Poyer were released before free agency. Longtime safety Micah Hyde, who was contemplating retirement, was non-tendered.

Buffalo had "no intention to ship [Diggs] away" originally, a team source said, but inquiries had been rampant even before the turbulent 2023 season, overtures the Bills rebuffed. Executives from several receiver-needy teams confirmed they did not hear from Buffalo this past offseason offering up Diggs -- the Bills were on the hook for Diggs' contract either way; there was no 2024 cap relief available by dealing him.

While team sources were not able to confirm whether Diggs officially requested a trade, they agree that Diggs was open to a change in scenery and that an eventual trade was a mutual decision.

"If he's not happy somewhere, he's smart enough to maneuver his way out," a source close to Diggs said.

Added a team source: "It's a normal thing for veteran guys at that stage of his career to be attracted to something new. I think there was some attraction [to Houston] for him."

At the Pro Bowl Games in February, Diggs acknowledged that "there's a lot of changes going on" in Buffalo and said, "I can't tell you what the future holds, but I'm still being me."

Then came the cryptic tweets.

"Ready for watever" on March 15; "Well...." a day later; "Being diligent" on March 25.

Whether motivational fodder or coded trade talk, these messages felt eerily similar to his social media habits before he was traded from Minnesota.

The belief in league circles is the Texans were committed to getting an established veteran receiver this offseason. They first tried with Keenan Allen, who was traded from the Los Angeles Chargers to the Chicago Bears on March 14. A source close to Allen said the Texans got "very close" to dealing for the receiver.

Once that fell through, the Texans pivoted to Diggs. Word out of the Bills' locker room started to trickle out in mid-March -- in line with those vague Diggs tweets -- that Houston was a possible destination.

Those who know Houston general manager Nick Caserio were not surprised by this. He scours the market for opportunities, a Texans source said, using personnel meetings to discuss players who could be available due to a litany of factors. "I think [Caserio] saw the writing on the wall [with Diggs in Buffalo]," the source said.

The Bills had several factors to navigate. They had to negotiate parameters of the deal. Houston and Diggs would also need to renegotiate his contract, wiping out the final three years to make him a 2025 free agent. Buffalo would need to grant permission for Diggs' camp and the Texans to talk before a trade commenced.

And a decision of this magnitude likely involved Josh Allen, at least indirectly. While the team's exact communication with Allen about Diggs' future with the team is unknown, one team source believes "[Allen is] at the point that they aren't going to make any important moves like that without letting him know."

The trade was announced April 3, with the Bills receiving a 2025 second-round pick in exchange for Diggs, a 2024 sixth-round pick (later dealt to the Lions) and a 2025 fifth-round selection. One AFC executive called Buffalo "lucky" to get that kind of value for a 30-year-old receiver, considering the belief among some in the industry that Houston might have been the lone major player for his services at the stage the deal was made.

Would Buffalo have dealt Diggs if it didn't receive an offer as good as Houston's? One team source was not aware of a hard line on hypothetical trade terms; another said it was the right time to move on and believes the parties probably would have found a way to part amicably -- even if it meant Buffalo shopping Diggs' services more aggressively. It never came to that.

Diggs called his experience in Houston "a breath of fresh air" when he met the media for the first time as a Texan in June.

"You thrive in a space where you're loved," Diggs said. "Thrive in a space of being around those who truly care and truly want to see you win."

It took Diggs little time to leave behind the career-high seven-game touchdown-less streak he brought with him from Buffalo. He caught two touchdown passes from C.J. Stroud in a Week 1 win over the Colts. Through four weeks, Diggs is No. 3 on ESPN's Receiver Scores list, a composite metric that distills a wide receiver's ability to get open, make catches and accrue yards after the catch. The Texans are making Diggs' place in the offense a priority in a way that wasn't happening in his final days in Buffalo.

Meanwhile, there's Josh Allen.

One day before he was traded in April, Diggs posed a pointed question to a social media user who expressed the opinion that Diggs was not essential to Allen's success.

"You sure?" Diggs fired back.

Through four weeks, it appears the user was on to something. The Bills are 3-1, and Allen is an early MVP candidate who leads the league in QBR through his first four games of the post-Diggs era.

And now comes Sunday's reunion, which has been preceded by just a touch of the drama emblematic of the Diggs-Bills relationship.

Allen made headlines after Buffalo's 47-10 Week 3 win over the Jaguars when he said, "That's the beauty of it when guys get to buy into this and really understand like I may not get the ball four or five times thrown to me a game but the one or two times I do, I'm going to have opportunities to be in the end zone. It's a fun and wonderful thing when you got a bunch of guys that don't care about the stats, they don't care about the touchdowns."

Allen later clarified that "I'm not trying to tear down anybody" and referenced Diggs specifically when he said, "I love 14, I still do. But everyone wants to keep making this thing [the split] a thing. We're so focused on what's going on inside of our building and that's the only thing we're caring about right now."

The many league observers who have had this game circled since the NFL schedule release will understand if that focus is diverted this Sunday.

After the Cowboys' Week 4 win over the Giants, Trevon Diggs was sporting oversized black shades to battle the bright camera lights by his locker. Reporters were fixated on his perspective after the Cowboys cornerback helped Dallas knock off the New York Giants.

Once the cameras shut off, a reporter reminded Diggs that Stefon's Texans host the Bills in Week 5.

"When is that game? Is it prime time?" asked Diggs, as if doing the math in his head to determine whether he needed to set the DVR.

Actually, the Cowboys face the Steelers in Pittsburgh in prime time, while Buffalo and Houston kick off at 1 p.m. ET. Trevon should be able to watch.

Many are excited for that matchup, the reporter told him. Stefon's younger brother arched an eyebrow and gave a knowing smile as he headed for the team bus.

"Me too," Trevon said.