Stefon Diggs is without question a superstar at the top of his craft. Known as an elite route-runner, he has dominated for eight years since entering the league in 2022. He has topped 1,000 yards receiving five straight times, including leading the league with 127 receptions and 1,535 yards in 2020 (his first with the Buffalo Bills).
Diggs has been selected to three Pro Bowls, and was named a first-team All-Pro in 2020. When the Minnesota Vikings traded him to the Buffalo Bills in 2020, it netted them the number 22 overall pick, which they used to draft another superstar in Justin Jefferson.
For his part, Diggs secured a 4-year $96 million contract extension with $70 million guaranteed that will keep him in Buffalo through the 2027 season.
Yet, Diggs to this day remains one of the biggest bargains in NFL draft history, having fallen to the sixth round in 2015 before the Vikings selected him. All 32 teams passed on Diggs several times and a total of 145 players were selected before him.
In an industry that scouts, measures, quantifies and evaluates every possible aspect of every prospects physical, mental and social aptitude, Diggs is a reminder that football players are humans (as are the front office personnel and scouts who evaluate them).
Finding the next Stefon Diggs is a dream for any front office executive. Drafting a player of his caliber even just late in the first round or into the middle rounds of the draft could change the fortunes of an NFL franchise for years.
As we approach the 2023 NFL draft, let’s take a look at the factors that made Diggs such a bargain, and evaluate if these criteria could make another player a draft day gem for some team this year.
Buffalo Bills, Stefon Diggs, Eli Apple (Mandatory Credit: Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports)
What is a five-star high school recruit?
Stefon Diggs was a consensus five-star high school recruit after playing football and running track at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Montgomery Maryland. But what exactly does it mean to be a five-star recruit?
Basically it means that it was universally agreed that Diggs was one of the top overall football prospects in the world. There are multiple scouting agencies with different scouts and slightly different criteria such as Rivals, ESPN and 247.
Rivals describes a five-star recruit as follow:
"“A five-star prospect is considered to be one of the nation’s top 25-30 players, four star is a top 250-300 or so player, three-stars is a top 750 level player, two stars means the player is a mid-major prospect, and one star means the player is not ranked.”"
So Diggs was widely recognized as one of the top football players in the nation. As such, he could have gone to any college he wanted on scholarship. Ultimately he chose to attend the University of Maryland in order to stay close to home because he had become a father-figure to his two younger brothers, Darez and Trevon after his father died due to congestive heart failure in 2008.
Stefon Diggs’ college struggles
Diggs dominated at Maryland as a true freshman as both a wide receiver and return man. He finished the year with 54 receptions for 848 yards and 6 touchdowns and finished as runner-up to be named the ACC Freshman of the Year.
He missed one game in his freshman season with an ankle injury, which unfortunately was a sign of things to come for him at Maryland. After a promising start to his sophomore season, he missed the final six games after fracturing his fibula in a game against Wake Forest. That injury would require surgery and end his season.
His junior season was also marred by missed time. After missing one game due to suspension for making contact with an official during a pregame fight that broke out before Maryland’s game against Penn State, Diggs once again suffered a season ending injury when he lacerated a kidney on a play in their game against Penn State.
Between injuries and suspensions, Diggs struggled with consistency and in college never played up to the potential that he had shown in high school, or to his billing as a five-star recruit.
When he declared for the draft in 2015 the move was controversial because of his injuries and struggles. Ultimately, he ended up falling to the sixth round before the Minnesota Vikings took him with the 145th pick.
The Bills should learn from Diggs’ draft history
Every team is looking for value in the NFL draft. While extreme examples such as Stefon Diggs are rare, there are players who fall in the draft every year. Looking at players such as Diggs, shows three criteria that teams and fans can look for to identify players who could provide extreme value.
First, teams should look for suppressed value. This could be due to any number of factors – from missing games due to injuries to personal issues impacting a player’s availability and ability to play. The key for teams is to identify factors that are not recurring.
In Diggs case, his injuries were freak in nature – a fracture and a lacerated kidney are not likely to recur. These can be contrasted to soft tissue injuries which may be more of an indication that a player is prone to injury. Similarly, his suspension and personal issues were isolated and not part of a larger pattern that should have caused concern.
The second criteria teams should look for is high character. The Bills love drafting players who were captains in college because it shows leadership, but this is not the only way to evaluate character. In Diggs’ case, he stepped up to provide and protect his younger brothers, sacrificing his own future and wants for them. Similarly, he worked extremely hard to come back from his injuries, showing resiliency and entering the NFL combine healthy when no one would have thought twice if he had taken more time to come back.
The third criteria is that the player should have an elite prospect profile. As we saw earlier, five-star recruits are rare. Typically these are the top-of-the-top physical specimens, the most elite physically gifted young men in the world. Five-star recruits do not often just lose their athletic ability. Even if they under-perform, they still possess talent and physical gifts that most people could never dream of. Whether at college or the NFL level, the challenge for teams is to tap into that potential.
Who could be the steal of this year’s draft?
Using the criteria that we noted with Diggs, we can evaluate if there are any players who might fall farther than they should, or may provide unexpected return value on a draft pick.
Looking for a player who was a five-star recruit out of high school, with high character and suppressed value due to personal issues and/or injuries that do not raise flags as recurring issues returns a short list. However, there is one player who stands out this year when evaluated in this way:
Clemson defensive tackle Bryan Bresee should be a target for the Bills at #27, and provides a clear day-two draft target if he falls out of the first round.
Bresee was a five-star recruit coming out of high school and started for Clemson as a rookie, being named the ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2020 after an absolutely dominant season.
In 2021, he suffered a shoulder injury which cost him some time before tearing his ACL and missing the remainder of the season. As a junior in 2022, things got worse for him as a bad case of strep throat led to a kidney infection which caused him to lose about 45 pounds. As he was going through the ACL rehab, strep and kidney infections, his younger sister passed away after a battle with cancer.
Still, Bresee entered the NFL combine at 6’5” and 298 lbs with a Relative Athletic Score of 9.59, which is elite and has shown enough to project a bounce-back to elite performance at the NFL level.
With a need on the defensive line, and a majority of the players in their rotation either on one-year contracts, in the last year of their deal, or dealing with injury concerns the Bills could target Bresee as a high-upside player that the Bills should target in the 2023 NFL draft.