- 3 months ago
What kind of player are the Commanders getting in Stefon Diggs? Tom Curran joins Grant & Danny to provide a New England perspective on Washington's newest star receiver. Curran discusses how Diggs helped the Patriots both on and off the field, the leadership and veteran presence he brought to the locker room, and why he believes those same qualities can make an immediate impact with the Commanders. He also shares why Diggs could be the perfect fit to help Jayden Daniels and Washington's young offense take the next step.
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00:00Get some insight on Stephon Diggs from someone who covered him last year in New England.
00:04And that's Tom Kern who joins us on Grant and Danny, Patriots Insider, NBC Sports Boston.
00:10Tom, thanks so much for a few minutes. Really appreciate it. How are you?
00:14I'm great. Happy to help. Good to hear from you, Grant.
00:16Good to talk to you, sir. So I guess pick up wherever you want to, but Diggs from last year,
00:23what were your thoughts on him as a player and as a guy?
00:26Why? Well, he's coming off an ACL that he suffered the previous November.
00:32And when they signed him, it was as if, you know, I think they spent about $12 to $14 million.
00:36They wanted to get D.K. Metcalf. They wanted to get, I can't remember who the other high-profile receiver
00:42was.
00:43They were even talking about, can we get Terry McLaurin somehow? They got Diggs.
00:48And you said, OK, well, they settled and it can be kind of a pain in the ass and hopefully
00:52it works out here.
00:53And he came in beginning a minicamp and he was, I remember saying at the time,
00:58it's breathtaking to see the way he's moving coming off an ACL six months ago.
01:03So not only did he move extremely well, work extremely hard,
01:07fit in Josh McDaniels' back pocket throughout these minicamps.
01:11He wouldn't go on the sideline. He would stand behind the quarterbacks
01:14and with the offensive coordinator really try to learn things.
01:18So I thought that was an interesting thing to see.
01:22And then when training camp starts, you know, my buddy Phil Perry and I had actually said on TV,
01:28yeah, sometimes it can be a pain in the ass.
01:30Well, that got back to him via Twitter as it often does by an aggregator.
01:34So he stands up at the podium the first day.
01:36He goes, because Phil and Tom, I don't know why you think of a pain in the ass.
01:41I don't think I've done anything, but I hope we can get off on the right foot and have a
01:45good season.
01:46So now you feel bad. He didn't do anything. Clean plate. Sorry stuff.
01:51And he was great. So no complaints in New England about Stephon Diggs nor his performance.
01:57Long story short. Long story longer.
01:59Yeah, well, go to that performance because, I mean, he was only playing just over half the snaps,
02:03still ended up with 85 catches, over 1,000 yards.
02:06That's the kind of production we don't really get around here very often.
02:09Just what did you see from him on the field as he was getting healthier?
02:13Yeah, when he says that I'll be the best number two in the league, I would concur with that,
02:19just based on the fact that he's still certainly a borderline one.
02:24What he can't do is really win down the field with speed.
02:28He can win with craftiness.
02:30If you check on pro football reference, which we all use, or next-gen stats,
02:36look at the contested catches and separation rate.
02:39His contested catches and separation rate, put it this way, his separation rate is really low.
02:46He does not get wide-ass open.
02:49But he catches everything.
02:51I think his catch rate was around 80% last year.
02:55And, yes, May had a great year, but those guys didn't drop the football.
02:59He or Booty or a lot of the players.
03:01But everything close to him he caught.
03:04He is still the technician that you figured that he was.
03:07He's a smaller guy, so that's why he doesn't necessarily fit the profile of a classic one
03:15if he doesn't have that breakaway speed or after-the-catch speed.
03:18But he's certainly a highly complementary player who will be perfect for a guy like Daniels
03:24who had such a star-crossed second season.
03:27Yeah, Tom, how beneficial was he to May, and what was their relationship like?
03:34He was very beneficial because I think that May, probably like Daniels, you come into the league
03:38and, you know, you were 14, 15, 16 watching Stephon Diggs rise in the league,
03:44and you were a fan of his.
03:45And now you're playing with him, and he's a very smart, normal teammate.
03:51Fun guy to be around, he was gregarious, he was not a planet unto himself.
03:58And I think that, you know, May learned a lot from having that kind of receiver.
04:01Now, Daniels already has that with McLaurin, but I think that in the Patriots-wide receiver room,
04:06with experience, nobody really had that level among the Patriots-wide receivers.
04:13So Diggs was a bump-up, and there were many times, I think, that May specifically thought him out
04:20in critical junctures and, you know, really looked for him on, you know, key third and fives
04:26or, you know, bail me out here, I need somebody.
04:31So as you look at, and I want to get to the off-field part of it,
04:35there were some incidents that, you know, or allegations that swirled around
04:38that could have easily been a distraction.
04:40This team went to the Super Bowl, they played so well, and Diggs was an integral part of that.
04:45How was that handled, where, you know, I'm sure he's maintaining his innocence,
04:49but it just became this huge deal, and it seemed like nobody missed a beat.
04:53How did that go?
04:58Our media horde is like yours.
05:00It crosses over from sports into news,
05:03and when a player of Stephon Diggs' notoriety has a court case
05:10and an allegation of, you know, domestic violence,
05:14that the dust-up occurred later in the year.
05:17It might have been around Thanksgiving or early December, if I remember correctly,
05:21and it was a living cook who complained that there was an argument over her not being paid
05:28and that he had abused her and locked her in a room, etc.
05:32Ultimately, he was completely exonerated of the charges.
05:37Meanwhile, we had another player on the Patriots at the same time
05:40with what seemed a more dire domestic violence situation
05:44that eventually was excused, but it seemed a little more dire when you thought.
05:49So those things just swirl around the team, and they also involve news,
05:53and it's hard, I think, for players to negotiate that,
05:57but Diggs' use of the limelight is...
06:00Look, there's a lot that goes on with Stephon Diggs.
06:03He does not mean what we would call a conventional life, you know,
06:08two cars and a white ticket fence.
06:10I think he had four children last year, and he goes out with Cardi B.
06:15But when it comes to being a teammate and how that impacts how he plays on Sunday
06:21or how he shows up to work as a teammate, it was not noticeable.
06:26So we do spend a lot of time, and we've both been doing this,
06:29all of us have been doing this for a long time around the league,
06:31and we presume that when a player has something happen off field,
06:37that his teammates are going to look at him and wonder how he's doing,
06:40and I think it's really just a passing thing.
06:42Everybody's doing their own thing.
06:44I'm going to root for my guy at work if something happens to him,
06:47but I still got my own stuff to do, and he did not bring it to the field in any
06:52way,
06:53in a negative, whether that's a positive or not.
06:56You'd rather nothing happen at all.
06:59But so put it that way.
07:01I would not be surprised if there is a headline at some point that makes you think,
07:07oh, well, I guess that happened.
07:10That's funny.
07:11He does have a pretty unique life.
07:13Tom Curran, Patriots Insider, NBCS Boston.
07:16So getting back into the football X's and O's side of this,
07:19I'm curious, like, how is he best used right now, right,
07:23in terms of inside, outside, just crosses and drag routes around the line of scrimmage?
07:29It seemed like it was a low A dot.
07:30Like, you just saw him for a whole year.
07:32What are the ways that you think make sense to use him,
07:35and what are ways where maybe you can't expect Minnesota Buffalo Stefan Diggs to walk through that door?
07:40Is McClure in a full-time X?
07:43Pretty much, yeah.
07:44I think that's the plan.
07:44He'll be their vertical guy.
07:47Then that's fine.
07:48Diggs works really well underneath.
07:50Like I said, he's a technician.
07:52His footwork is really cool to watch if you get out to camp,
07:55which it sounds like you guys are as we speak.
07:58So, you know, his footwork is really cool to watch, the speed with which he gets into breaks,
08:03out of breaks, the way he decelerates and, you know, chops his feet.
08:07It's really cool.
08:07So he can do all that stuff inside with no problem at all.
08:11He does have the toughness.
08:12There were a couple occasions I could illustrate.
08:14He took some real good hits last year, including one on an onside kick.
08:18They put him out there on the hands team.
08:20And it was early in the year.
08:21You still didn't know what Stefan Diggs was going to give you
08:23or what kind of player he was going to be because you had preconceived notions of him.
08:29He went up, pulled down on one of those high-bouncing onside kicks
08:34and got absolutely annihilated, held onto the ball, popped up.
08:38Everything was fine.
08:39So he showed, by way of illustrating, that you can send him over the middle
08:44and he will show toughness.
08:45He's not saying, you know what, I'm not doing that anymore.
08:47I'm 33.
08:49Tom Curran with us here on GND, giving us some insight into Stefan Diggs,
08:53the newest member of the local Washington 53.
08:56In terms of him being removed far enough now from that injury,
09:00one of the selling points that sounded like it came from his agent or his camp
09:02or whatever, I remember a Jeremy Fowler report a couple of weeks ago
09:05reminding everybody he was just over 50% snap count
09:08and it was coming off the knee injury.
09:10How much truth is there to that in your view,
09:12that he could be that much better further removed from that surgery,
09:16maybe a bit more explosive than we've seen him maybe over the last year and a half?
09:20Yeah, I would buy that.
09:22I would.
09:23I mean, I've never had an ACL, but I imagine that 10 months removed from it,
09:31which he would have been in September and October when he was having some pretty good games,
09:34including, you know, there was a game against Buffalo, if you guys want to call it up.
09:37Grant, I don't know if you're still right anymore,
09:39but that would be a good game to reference and look back at.
09:43It was on a Sunday night, I believe, against Buffalo at Buffalo,
09:48and, you know, that was kind of early in the season, relatively,
09:52and he was a big piece of that, and that's only like nine or ten months removed from the ACL,
09:56so I would not be surprised if he is more comfortable at least to run on it.
10:02It's got to get sore, doesn't it?
10:04It has to.
10:06But being a good man at that point.
10:34You know, that they kind of took advantage of the schedule.
10:36There was obviously the off-season distractions with Mike Vrabel.
10:39What's the state of the union there in camp right now?
10:43Upbeat.
10:44You know, it's probably the same state.
10:45I think that there are parallels between the Patriots, the Commanders, the Broncos,
10:50maybe to an extent the Jaguars, Bears, all of these teams with young quarterbacks,
10:55and I included Trevor Lawrence in there for the hell of it, even though he's not as young,
10:59but all these teams with these young quarterbacks who look like they are going to be the next group of
11:05top tens,
11:06you know, going into the 2030s, those guys I think would all be in that mix.
11:10I don't know if Bo Nix will be there or not, but it could be because of the team around
11:13him.
11:14It's high, and as we're watching this training camp, I've watched training camp here since 1997
11:21and had the really true, no lie, privilege of watching Tom Brady for 20-plus years,
11:28and when you watch that, you know what a really good training camp looks like.
11:33You know what a really good quarterback practice looks like, and Drake May is having those,
11:37and I've seen some really crappy ones post-Grady, and I'm seeing really good ones now.
11:42So that was one thing, you know, was it a flash in the pan last year where it would come
11:46out
11:46and look a little bit cleaner?
11:47It does look cleaner.
11:48I'm a little bit circumspect about the pass rush.
11:52Did you guys try to kill it on Jason?
11:54Yes, we did, yes.
11:55He's here, yeah.
11:57Yeah, good player, really good guy.
12:00They got rid of him because he really isn't that stout against the run,
12:03but he was a very good pass rusher and a very high-energy guy.
12:07So the question mark here is if someone with the Patriots' pass rush.
12:10But he'll be a 9-11 win team in my expert opinion.
12:16I feel like, by the way, as we're talking to the expert and getting his expert opinion,
12:22watching them in the playoffs where their defense kind of led their offense,
12:26they were running a lot of the stuff that Washington's going to run defensively.
12:29They might dress it up differently, but that Flores like 6-7 on the line,
12:34you don't know who's coming and going, guys are getting free releases.
12:37Did they do that all year?
12:38It seemed to me like they did more of that into the playoffs,
12:41or was that kind of what they looked like in October as well?
12:45Nope.
12:45They really embraced that as the season went along,
12:47and I think part of that was because they didn't have one of those, you know,
12:529-foot wingspan pass rushers who was just going to overpower,
12:56and they could win with four.
12:57So they decided to try and win with confusion,
12:59which against the Chargers and the Texans they were able to do,
13:02and then getting against Jarrett Stidham they were able to do.
13:05They really confused teams.
13:06And then with Seattle they were not able to confuse them,
13:09and they were not able to cross the 50-yard line,
13:11which is a difficult thing to deal with as an offense.
13:15How is just, this is my own morbid curiosity,
13:18the sort of swirling things around Mike Vrabel this offseason,
13:21I don't think it affected his football standing at all,
13:24but what's that been like to cover and digest up there?
13:28Well, it sucks, you know, to cover it.
13:30Yeah.
13:30You know, even Aaron Rodgers alluded to it because, you know,
13:35the other day on ESPN, it sucks to cover it
13:38because it's obviously an off-field personal situation
13:44that is a hell of a lot more difficult to face
13:49when you walk in the door or face your children
13:53than it is to face the media.
13:55And you would be, I would imagine,
13:57concerned about how your family is doing in that.
14:02Infamy, for lack of a better word,
14:03of business upon them.
14:04But I think that, again,
14:06you guys haven't covered the league or been in the league,
14:10you understand that with 90 players during training camp
14:14and innumerable executives,
14:16everyone is going through everything
14:18from deaths in the family to tragedies to jailings
14:22to home situations.
14:26It's all going on.
14:27And everyone, you know, people say,
14:30well, how are the players going to be affected?
14:31I was like, they're worried about trying to cover a kick.
14:36They're not really worried on the field
14:38about how Mike is doing at home.
14:41It just doesn't reveal itself, I think, on a daily basis.
14:46So, I mean, that's the long and short of it.
14:49Do you agree with that?
14:51It's Danny, right?
14:52Yes.
14:53As in Danny...
14:56Yeah, it certainly resonates and makes sense to me.
14:59I wish, I'd have a lot more money.
15:01It's quite literally Danny Cannell,
15:03former Florida State quarterback.
15:04Yeah, that's what I would say.
15:05Oh, look, I'm not down there,
15:06and, you know, I'm not always plugged in.
15:08I was almost positive it was Danny Cannell,
15:10but I didn't want to presume it was Danny Cannell.
15:13So, that's why I was, like,
15:14referring to being in the league.
15:16So, yeah, I mean, Danny, you played.
15:18I mean, people have crap going on left and right.
15:22You just say you wish him the best,
15:23hope it sorts itself out,
15:25and you say, I got stuff to do over here.
15:27Yeah, business to attend to.
15:30Tom, thank you.
15:32Great information.
15:33Looking forward to working with Diggs here in D.C.
15:35and watching him on Sundays.
15:36We appreciate the insight.
15:38Yeah, I hope I wasn't too flowery,
15:40but he was really enjoyable.
15:41That was great.
15:42No, it was perfect.
15:43We're looking for the real.
15:44There's Tom Kern.
15:45I've always really thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him.