End-of-season playoff losses are always devastating, but Buffalo Bills Pro Bowl wide receiver Stefon Diggs took his team’s 10-27 home loss to the third-ranked Cincinnati Bengals particularly hard. After the athlete, Diggs sprinted out of the locker room with all of his belongings before some of Buffalo’s coaching staff even made it to the tunnel leading to the locker room. Veteran running back Duke Johnson, who is on the Bills practice team, escorted his teammate back to the locker room before exiting Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York again on Sunday.
The 29-year-old, who served as the Bills team captain for both the 2021 and 2022 seasons after being acquired in a trade from the Minnesota Vikings in 2020, also met the Buffalo quarterback on the touchline late in the game Josh Allen. Diggs caught four passes for 35 yards on 10 game-high goals, but only two of those came in the fourth quarter when the Bills were 24-10 behind. After the loss, Allen said he needed to check the tape to see “whatever we couldn’t get [Diggs] The ball tonight that we need to learn from.”
Head coach Sean McDermott said Diggs was in the locker room when he addressed the team, which he said was “the most important thing.” He also addressed Diggs’ perceived outburst:
“He’s a competitive guy,” McDermott said via NewYorkUpstate.com. “That’s what makes him good, as you’ve seen. He’s very competitive, like all of us. We work extremely hard on these jobs to be the best we can be and it hurts. I wouldn’t want a man who doesn’t hurt, right? So when you gambled everything out there, we gambled everything, and tonight it wasn’t good enough. That’s the part that hurts.
Diggs has played like arguably the best wide receiver in team history since coming from Minnesota. He leads the league in catches (338) tied with Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams, ranks second in targets (484), fourth in yards (4,189), and sixth in touchdowns (29 ), since becoming the bill in 2020 Each of Diggs’ first three seasons at Buffalo ranks among the top three seasons in team history as measured by single-year catches. His 2020 season (1,535 yards) and 2022 (1,429 yards) are the second highest single-season yardage in Bills history. Diggs’ 11 touchdowns that season tied the team’s single-season touchdown record with Bill Brooks’ 11 from the 1995 season.
Diggs signed a four-year, $96 million extension with the team on April 6, tying him to the Western New York team during his 2027 season aged 34. The deal was finalized at this point, with 2023 set to be his final year of contract. How the Bills decide to deal with that outburst could potentially reshape their entire offense, as a series of cryptic tweets from Diggs prevented the Vikings from trading him despite his performance just a few years ago.