Few — if any — wide receivers own the Miami Dolphins quite like Stefon Diggs.
The good news for Mike McDaniel and Anthony Weaver? They’ll only have to worry about Diggs once this year.
That’s because the Buffalo Bills moved on from Diggs after four highly productive seasons together, trading their WR1 to the Houston Texans for a premium draft pick — in 2025.
Buffalo Bills’ Loss is Miami Dolphins’ Gain
The full details of the swap, per published reports: The Texans are getting Diggs, a 2024 sixth-round pick, and a fifth-rounder in 2025. For all that, the Bills get a second in 2025.
That top 65 pick will help down the road. But it wont help in 2024, when the Bills will try to extend their streak of AFC East championships to five.
The Dolphins haven’t won the division since 2008, losing a de facto AFC East title game to Diggs and the Bills in the final game of the 2023 NFL regular season.
Certainly, there’s an argument to be made that Diggs’ time in Buffalo had run its course. Beyond his up and down nature that surely wore thin in Western New York, Diggs might be a player in decline.
In the second half of last season, Diggs’ DVOA was an atrocious -21.3% after a solid 13.9% in Weeks 1-9, per Aaron Schatz of FTN Fantasy.
And it’s certainly telling that the Bills are OK eating $31.1 million in dead money to move on.
But fans (and some teams) have a way of understating a player’s value when his time with a franchise ends.
Diggs was one of the best players in football for basically his entire time with the Bills. He totaled 5,372 receiving yards and 37 catches in his four seasons with Buffalo.
Much of that production came at the expense of the Dolphins.
Diggs went 8-1 against Miami during his time with the Bills, with 719 yards and seven touchdowns. He averaged 13.6 yards per catch and 9.2 yards per target in those games.
The Bills — who this offseason have gutted the core that won all of those titles — will presumably look to the draft to replace him, but the best prospects will be long gone by the time they go on the clock with pick No. 28.
The trade leaves the Bills with just four wide receivers on their roster: Curtis Samuel, Mack Hollins, Justin Shorter, and Khalil Shakir.
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