Normally when identifying the player of the game, analysts will pick the flashiest player on offense who produced the gaudiest volume-driven statistics. That, in turn, leads to others (like me) who sometimes try too hard to be clever and select a player whose position doesn’t typically produce statistics or plays an unsung position.
In this case, it’s not difficult: the best player on the field for the Vikings was Stefon Diggs, who also produced the best statistics and played a flashy position.
There were more impactful plays from other players, like Eric Kendricks’ interception or Harrison Smith’s key 3rd-and-1 stop, but Diggs was consistently performing for the Vikings despite questions at the quarterback position.
Beyond being the best player in the game, Diggs demonstrated translatable qualities that distinguish him from merely being productive and instead being a consistent threat for the Vikings —evidently even with a backup quarterback throwing the ball.
Bleacher Report ranked him as the 28th-best receiver entering the season, and Pro Football Focus liked him even more than that, giving him an 81.8 — a top-20 grade.
He tailed off at the end of last year for what could be a variety of reasons, and entered this season determined to make good on the early hype he garnered from his mid-season play. His training camp was excellent, and his preseason was fun to watch, but it wasn’t until he went off against Tennessee on Sunday that it felt real that he could emerge as a top receiver.
PFF ranked Diggs as the fifth-best receiver of the week, and he made their all-Week 1 team despite grading a bit lower than Larry Fitzgerald.
What exactly does Diggs do to make him a threat as a receiver?
In the above GIF, Diggs wasn’t the target, but he was the key player in this route combination. He’s at the bottom of the screen, and the Vikings are in a 2×2 set with the strength of the formation at the bottom and run Peterson as the third receiver in a “Scissors” route combination.
One player (Peterson) runs a flat route while Kyle Rudolph runs a corner route that sees him release upfield before stemming diagonally to the sideline. That combination by itself is called a “flat-seven” and does an excellent job beating Cover-2 teams by stressing the defender underneath Rudolph’s route.
That two-level read is simple for quarterbacks to execute.
Diggs, however, can add more to it by running a post route to make it a “scissors” combination route that criss-crosses with Rudolph’s corner route. Against Cover-4 and the look that the Titans ran (Cover-3) it puts a lot of stress on the defense.
The key is that Diggs moves the corner off his spot and finds the right hole in the zone against Cover-3. With the wrong angle, he would find himself covered by the free safety. The weight with which he drives upfield threatens the go route, and his heavy step outside flips the cornerback to respect a fade.
It opens up Rudolph, which Hill probably should have thrown, and a touchdown opportunity deep.
The motion that moved Rudolph from the outside to the inside revealed that the defense wasn’t just in zone coverage, but that they were in half-quarters, which is a combination of Cover-2 (on the bottom of that screen) and Cover-4 (on the top of that screen)—sometimes called Cover-6.
Diggs runs his vertical stem with conviction once more, just to stop on a dime and hit the curl underneath the zone. Both the cornerback and the safety were taken by surprise and the safety even signaled a deep shot.
That’s a critical point; Diggs sells his routes incredibly well. He’s not even at a point where’s textbook — he could maintain his pad level for a bit longer to sell the deep shot even more — but he runs a convincing enough route that two defensive backs were taken out of the play covering him.
And of course, he works his way back to the ball to make sure any real estate he’s gained from the ball is his exclusively. Speaking of buying real estate:
Diggs doesn’t end up open as a result of the coverage — Cover-1 man — but looking at how he manipulates the cornerback from the slot is great. He keeps pushing outside until the cornerback finally bites and then leaves the CB for his own route either up or inside.
He does a consistently good job pressing corners into the wrong area of the field.
What separates Diggs from other route-runners, however, is his inherent ability to shield the ball, win in tight spaces and provide a surprisingly large catch radius for his quarterbacks.
In those last two GIFs, he showcases it all. In the second GIF, he has to create space for the underthrown ball without alerting cornerback Jason McCourty, so he moves at the last second to create catchable space, tracks the ball, and keeps it through contact. In that first GIF, he showed an ability to deal with an overthrown ball while still making sure he had exclusive access to it.
His catch radius might be larger than a lot of tall receivers simply because of his athleticism and eyes.
There are a lot more things he needs to do in order to grow as a true threat as a receiver and live up to the Antonio Brown comparisons he’s gotten. He knows how to get skinny at the release and defeat press coverage that way, but must develop a greater variety of moves against the jam.
He needs to find other ways to sell routes and sell a greater variety of them. Most of the time, he’s content telling the defense he’s going vertical. Sometimes, that’s not the best direction to move a defense and he should be more comfortable selling inside to go out and vice versa.
But he’s an intelligent player who knows where he needs to be in response to various coverages, and he can subtly move defensive backs by shifting his weight instead of relying on flashier and more obvious moves that can waste time. He generates separation at the release, throughout the route and at the stem, and can find himself open very suddenly.
His ability at the catch point should make him a Vikings go-to target going forward, even if Laquon Treadwell lives up to his billing.
