Bills’ Stefon Diggs Earns Praise After Calling Out Teammates at Camp

Stefon Diggs is back to work after an offseason filled with drama, and stepping back into a leadership role at Buffalo Bills‘ training camp.

Diggs earned some praise for the intensity he has shown through the first three days of training camp, with Boston Globe reporter Ben Volin noting that Diggs has been active in getting teammates on the same page on offense.

“Love the intensity with which Stefon Diggs practices,” Volin tweeted on July 28. “Someone jumps offsides and Diggs gets all over his teammates. You need that type of buy-in and leadership from your non-quarterbacks.”

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Stefon Diggs Moving On

Diggs has addressed the offseason drama, saying he and the team have moved beyond the issues and put their full focus on the upcoming season.

“If anybody has a family here, everybody has family issues, everybody has family problems in the house,” Diggs said, via SI.com’s Bills Central.

Diggs had first sparked concern when he was seen growing animated toward quarterback Josh Allen on the sidelines during the team’s playoff loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, and sparked more drama with a series of cryptic posts hinting at discontent with the team. It came to a head in June when Diggs was absent on the first day of the team’s mandatory minicamp, but the Bills later downplayed the incident and head coach Sean McDermott said it was an excused absence.

Diggs said this week that the two sides discussed and worked out the issues, which were never explicitly revealed by either side.

“We had a conversation, everything, all is well, water under the bridge, now we back at work,” Diggs said. “I look at football, it’s kind of hard, it’s a business at the end of the day, but when you go out there and you fight tooth and nail, you put a lot of sweat equity into this thing, it starts to feel like a family.”

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Sean McDermott Speaks Out

Though McDermott contributed to the drama surrounding Diggs when he initially said he was “very concerned” about his minicamp absence — a statement that he walked back the following day while explaining that it was an excused absence — he appeared on the same page as the wide receiver at training camp.

As ESPN’s Alaina Getzenberg noted, McDermott said the two sides were “in a good spot” regarding the situation with Diggs.

As Getzenberg pointed out, McDermott had already explained that his only “concern” with Diggs was that he was not able to put in the needed time with teammates during offseason workouts.

“That’s my sentiment with any player, in particular a player as important to us as Stef,” McDermott said in June. “And so, I get concerned when players miss for reasons off the field, for reasons on the field. Whether it be they’re injured or whatever it is. That’s just how I am. So, when I say very concerned, I’m very concerned because of the situation with one of our players, and it was something that we needed to work through and those are healthy conversations that happen and I’m extremely appreciative of those conversations. It gets us, when you have those healthy conversations, it gets you to a better spot. And I feel good about that. I feel like we’re in that spot.”

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