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- Apr 7, 2013
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By Bob Sturm
6m ago
Every week until the regular season, this series will put the spotlight on a key, but not fully established Cowboys player who is still on his way to his finished form. It will try to examine where his journey has gone so far, where 2022 might take him and beyond.
Last week in this series, we profiled the case of Dalton Schultz. Schultz has a much more complex case to consider when you look at his franchise tag designation and the big bucks that go with it. He has a much simpler case to consider because he has been in the NFL for four full years and that gives us a much larger body of work to consider.
This week, we will slide that scale back a few years from the 2018 draft to the 2020 draft and with only two seasons of work we need to look long and hard at the fantastic Cowboys corner Trevon Diggs.
Diggs has absolutely dazzled in many respects in his first two seasons after disappointingly sliding out of the first round of his draft. He gets the football at a rate that is hard to fathom — a true ball-hawking corner — especially given that he plays for a franchise that has traditionally been turnover averse like the Dallas Cowboys. Imagine this, going all the way back to the year 2000, only two players have intercepted more passes than Diggs in a Cowboys uniform.
Two!
Check out the list:
Cowboys Interception Leaders, 2000-2021
Diggs has only played in 28 games. He has 14 interceptions in 28 NFL games. Trust me, a defender coming up with an interception every two games at the NFL level is simply unprecedented. You won’t find it anywhere.
Diggs has done that.
He also has run off a first-team All-Pro (along with Micah Parsons) for a Cowboys defender. They are the first two to do so since Sean Lee (2016) and DeMarcus Ware (2011). It doesn’t happen much at all.
So, a corner is on his rookie deal and making almost no money and has 14 interceptions in two seasons while being voted alongside Jalen Ramsey as a first-team NFL cornerback.
This should be a very easy evaluation, right? He is great. Rubberstamp a new game-changing extension in two years and welcome a new Deion Sanders to the Cowboy-verse?
Actually, it isn’t that easy.
Only one player in the NFL in 2021 gave up 1,000 yards in coverage last year: Diggs.
And before you say that “we don’t know who’s man that was” … well, we kind of do.
In Cover 1 (the most basic of man coverages and one of the Cowboys’ favorites last season), guess who gave up the most yards in the NFL?
Diggs.
In zones, he also managed the fifth most. In fact, of his 1,000 yards, he almost split it evenly between man and zone.
He also tied for the most penalties by corners with 11.
And, of 120 corners graded, PFF determined he was easily in the bottom 10 in defending the run. And yes, I would verify with plenty of tape that he is very likely deserving of that.
He is great. Absolutely great in many ways.
He also has so much room for growth and given that he doesn’t have a fifth year on his rookie deal, the Cowboys will have a decision on their hands in about 12 months as we head to camp in 2023. Are they interested in giving him a top corner contract or are they prepared to let him get to free agency?
Top contracts right now — including Ramsey’s — are all in the five-year, $100 million range for corners. The guarantees are creeping up to $50 million and give it about 12 months and we will probably be north of both of those numbers. So, like so many players in this league, his flaws are easy to overlook at $100,000 a game, but when we go to $1.2 million per game, we will need him to be a constant solution and almost never the problem. A guy who can win battles against the top receivers in the league every week, because he will get those assignments and they will hopefully think twice before throwing at him. But, given the target load he faced last year — fifth most in the league — it sure seems they go right at him.
But, wait. Who else is targeted a huge amount? Ramsey, JC Jackson and Marshon Lattimore. In fact, almost every “elite corner” in the league gets targeted between five and seven times a game and with Diggs at six times per game. It is right in the range.
Now, those other guys are not giving up 1,000 yards, though. Lattimore was at 860; Jackson and Ramsey were near 600, so there is a substantial difference. Of course, the trio of “elites” had 15 interceptions combined. Diggs had 11 of those. Also, none of them are playing as much man coverage as Diggs, but Jackson was playing quite a lot of it.
Diggs is a different player for sure, so let’s try our best to get a good look at things as best we can.
Trevon Diggs
Age: 23
College: Alabama
Drafted: 2020, Round 2, Pick 51
Height/weight/40: 6-1, 204, 4.42
Contract: Diggs is entering the third season of a four-year, $6.3 million rookie contract that will pay him $1.2 million in 2022 and $1.5 million in 2023 before he can become an unrestricted free agent in the spring of 2024.
Where we have been:
It was amazing how quickly he became a key player for the Cowboys defense. After sliding in the draft a bit, the Cowboys couldn’t believe their amazing fortune. They entered the draft wanting either a cover corner or a pass rusher and when CeeDee Lamb was available, they had to think fast and divert their plans completely. But, then, one of their preferred corners was staring at them for their second-rounder, too.
Diggs was a wide receiver for much of his youth and is the younger brother of Bills standout WR Stefon Diggs. He plays corner as if he is still a wide receiver at times by reading a QB and making plays on the ball as if the QB winked at him in the huddle. He knows what offenses want to do and it makes him great at sniffing things out. Of course, part of “sniffing things out” is basically guessing. Educated guesses, yes, but still. You are guessing. And when that happens, you will eventually guess wrong. More on that in a moment.
He played in both man and zone at Alabama, but if there are two things they try to teach there, it is playing aggressive press coverage and also managing your risks. Understand that the object of the game for a defense is to make an offense work very hard for what it gets. Yes, you will give up yards and points, but if you can make a team march slowly down the field, there is a great opportunity for mistakes. Big plays are death. Do not take crazy chances and allow big chunks.
However, as we suggested at the top, Diggs is a ball hawk. And there is no better deodorant for a few miscalculations than coming back to the sideline holding the football. He began to show this early in his rookie year and to be fair, he really has never stopped.
He broke his foot and missed a big chunk of his 2020 season, but he also fought to get back quickly. He has a real strong mentality that he wants to be on the field, wants to cover your best man and wants to make a play. You have to love all of that.
He also has made very big plays that are not included in his interception totals. He broke up passes, threw his body into the path to make plays and, at times, showed a knack for tackling.
So why was he graded so poorly by places such as Pro Football Focus, who ranked him 59th of the 77 qualifiers, if he was voted as one of only two first-team All-Pro corners?
There are many things to say here.
First, he was beaten way too often for big plays. On gains of 15-plus yards, there was only one corner in the NFL who conceded more. Most of it came on concepts that specifically targeted his aggressiveness against him. Double moves and stutter moves that would bait Diggs and then attack it.
You may not know the Cowboys played more man coverage than any team in the NFL last year. But, this is where the individual and isolated attacks on Diggs were most successful. Again, he held up very well quite a bit and his success rate was very good. But, there are many plays in every game and Diggs played almost 1,100 of them.
We cut up some of his best plays and some of his worst ones to give you an example. You can see those and come to your own conclusions.
When you consider the entire body of work through two years, I cannot imagine anyone is willing to say that the massive strengths aren’t there. At the same time, it would be almost equally silly to claim that the weaknesses aren’t present as well. Yes, everyone gets attacked, but seldom is your best corner treated like an inviting part of the game plan to expose. At times, it was clear he was circled on the whiteboard in the opposing meeting rooms — and not for the right reasons.
He is an incredible talent and he is also a player with great “room for growth” and I think that leads us perfectly into our summary of where we are headed next.
Where we are headed:
We are headed into a big year for Diggs, for sure. If he can continue to be a ball hawk for a team that plays more man than anyone, he will get a dump-truck of money soon. Like we said, he does give up a good amount, but we cannot forget who he is asked to cover every week and also that most everyone who plays in this league is giving up quite a bit. Yes, Diggs gave up more than anyone else in 2021, but we shouldn’t overstate what that means. Would you trade 200 yards in coverage for three takeaways? Because every coach in the NFL surely would do that in a moment and not think twice.
Still, the big question lurks: Would he be as charming at $20 million a season? Because that is where an extension will start. You instantly determine he is one of your five most important football players when you hand him that check which can be done as early as next spring. Is it a no-brainer?
Because here is the truth about high interception guys in today’s NFL: there is very little repeatability to the big season. In other words, we have record books and there are two things that are extremely rare since quarterbacks learned to stop throwing so many picks:
1. Seasons of eight or more interceptions don’t happen much.
2. When they do happen, that is not the new normal. It is usually a big outlier season.
In 2020, Xavien Howard had 10. He followed it up with five. He is a true ball hawk, too.
In fact, there had been no other eight-interception seasons since 2017 when Kevin Byard and Darius Slay both reached that number. Byard has not gone beyond five since. Slay has only gotten to three in a season since. Marcus Peters is a guy Diggs gets compared to at times (unfair or not) as a ball hawk with holes in his game. Peters had eight as a rookie and while he has been productive since, he averaged 4.2 in his next four years (before being injured in 2021).
The point is simple. If you need 11 picks to justify the negative parts of the game, please know that Diggs would be doing something that has not really ever been done by doing it again. Interceptions require cooperation by other parties and if he somehow does it again, pay him as much money as he wants.
The plot twists could still be coming fast and furious. At the moment, I evaluate him as a definite piece of my future, despite the expenditures. I am aware of the issues on double-moves, run support and game theory, but I also recognize that a player grows from his rookie year and I know a complete game-breaker when I see one. We must understand that to give the money, we have to know he is a leader and a room guy you don’t mind handing control to because money talks loudly and on the outside we cannot truly know all that goes into that. Basically, I am telling you that I can see a defense going forward that builds around Diggs and Parsons.
But the research is still being collected. This season will either cement that thinking and we will start talking deals or perhaps we will have to really think this over a year from now.
There is nothing easy about being a top corner in this league.
6m ago
Every week until the regular season, this series will put the spotlight on a key, but not fully established Cowboys player who is still on his way to his finished form. It will try to examine where his journey has gone so far, where 2022 might take him and beyond.
Last week in this series, we profiled the case of Dalton Schultz. Schultz has a much more complex case to consider when you look at his franchise tag designation and the big bucks that go with it. He has a much simpler case to consider because he has been in the NFL for four full years and that gives us a much larger body of work to consider.
This week, we will slide that scale back a few years from the 2018 draft to the 2020 draft and with only two seasons of work we need to look long and hard at the fantastic Cowboys corner Trevon Diggs.
Diggs has absolutely dazzled in many respects in his first two seasons after disappointingly sliding out of the first round of his draft. He gets the football at a rate that is hard to fathom — a true ball-hawking corner — especially given that he plays for a franchise that has traditionally been turnover averse like the Dallas Cowboys. Imagine this, going all the way back to the year 2000, only two players have intercepted more passes than Diggs in a Cowboys uniform.
Two!
Check out the list:
Cowboys Interception Leaders, 2000-2021
| PLAYER | GAMES PLAYED | INTERCEPTIONS |
|---|---|---|
 Terence Newman | 133 | 32 |
| Roy Williams | 98 | 19 |
 Trevon Diggs | 28 | 14 |
| Sean Lee | 118 | 14 |
| Anthony Henry | 57 | 12 |
 Anthony Brown | 82 | 9 |
 Jeff Heath | 106 | 8 |
| Gerald Sensabaugh | 62 | 8 |
| Mike Jenkins | 71 | 8 |
| Orlando Scandrick | 125 | 8 |
Diggs has only played in 28 games. He has 14 interceptions in 28 NFL games. Trust me, a defender coming up with an interception every two games at the NFL level is simply unprecedented. You won’t find it anywhere.
Diggs has done that.
He also has run off a first-team All-Pro (along with Micah Parsons) for a Cowboys defender. They are the first two to do so since Sean Lee (2016) and DeMarcus Ware (2011). It doesn’t happen much at all.
So, a corner is on his rookie deal and making almost no money and has 14 interceptions in two seasons while being voted alongside Jalen Ramsey as a first-team NFL cornerback.
This should be a very easy evaluation, right? He is great. Rubberstamp a new game-changing extension in two years and welcome a new Deion Sanders to the Cowboy-verse?
Actually, it isn’t that easy.
Only one player in the NFL in 2021 gave up 1,000 yards in coverage last year: Diggs.
And before you say that “we don’t know who’s man that was” … well, we kind of do.
In Cover 1 (the most basic of man coverages and one of the Cowboys’ favorites last season), guess who gave up the most yards in the NFL?
Diggs.
In zones, he also managed the fifth most. In fact, of his 1,000 yards, he almost split it evenly between man and zone.
He also tied for the most penalties by corners with 11.
And, of 120 corners graded, PFF determined he was easily in the bottom 10 in defending the run. And yes, I would verify with plenty of tape that he is very likely deserving of that.
He is great. Absolutely great in many ways.
He also has so much room for growth and given that he doesn’t have a fifth year on his rookie deal, the Cowboys will have a decision on their hands in about 12 months as we head to camp in 2023. Are they interested in giving him a top corner contract or are they prepared to let him get to free agency?
Top contracts right now — including Ramsey’s — are all in the five-year, $100 million range for corners. The guarantees are creeping up to $50 million and give it about 12 months and we will probably be north of both of those numbers. So, like so many players in this league, his flaws are easy to overlook at $100,000 a game, but when we go to $1.2 million per game, we will need him to be a constant solution and almost never the problem. A guy who can win battles against the top receivers in the league every week, because he will get those assignments and they will hopefully think twice before throwing at him. But, given the target load he faced last year — fifth most in the league — it sure seems they go right at him.
But, wait. Who else is targeted a huge amount? Ramsey, JC Jackson and Marshon Lattimore. In fact, almost every “elite corner” in the league gets targeted between five and seven times a game and with Diggs at six times per game. It is right in the range.
Now, those other guys are not giving up 1,000 yards, though. Lattimore was at 860; Jackson and Ramsey were near 600, so there is a substantial difference. Of course, the trio of “elites” had 15 interceptions combined. Diggs had 11 of those. Also, none of them are playing as much man coverage as Diggs, but Jackson was playing quite a lot of it.
Diggs is a different player for sure, so let’s try our best to get a good look at things as best we can.
Trevon Diggs
Age: 23
College: Alabama
Drafted: 2020, Round 2, Pick 51
Height/weight/40: 6-1, 204, 4.42
Contract: Diggs is entering the third season of a four-year, $6.3 million rookie contract that will pay him $1.2 million in 2022 and $1.5 million in 2023 before he can become an unrestricted free agent in the spring of 2024.
Where we have been:
It was amazing how quickly he became a key player for the Cowboys defense. After sliding in the draft a bit, the Cowboys couldn’t believe their amazing fortune. They entered the draft wanting either a cover corner or a pass rusher and when CeeDee Lamb was available, they had to think fast and divert their plans completely. But, then, one of their preferred corners was staring at them for their second-rounder, too.
Diggs was a wide receiver for much of his youth and is the younger brother of Bills standout WR Stefon Diggs. He plays corner as if he is still a wide receiver at times by reading a QB and making plays on the ball as if the QB winked at him in the huddle. He knows what offenses want to do and it makes him great at sniffing things out. Of course, part of “sniffing things out” is basically guessing. Educated guesses, yes, but still. You are guessing. And when that happens, you will eventually guess wrong. More on that in a moment.
He played in both man and zone at Alabama, but if there are two things they try to teach there, it is playing aggressive press coverage and also managing your risks. Understand that the object of the game for a defense is to make an offense work very hard for what it gets. Yes, you will give up yards and points, but if you can make a team march slowly down the field, there is a great opportunity for mistakes. Big plays are death. Do not take crazy chances and allow big chunks.
However, as we suggested at the top, Diggs is a ball hawk. And there is no better deodorant for a few miscalculations than coming back to the sideline holding the football. He began to show this early in his rookie year and to be fair, he really has never stopped.
He broke his foot and missed a big chunk of his 2020 season, but he also fought to get back quickly. He has a real strong mentality that he wants to be on the field, wants to cover your best man and wants to make a play. You have to love all of that.
He also has made very big plays that are not included in his interception totals. He broke up passes, threw his body into the path to make plays and, at times, showed a knack for tackling.
So why was he graded so poorly by places such as Pro Football Focus, who ranked him 59th of the 77 qualifiers, if he was voted as one of only two first-team All-Pro corners?
There are many things to say here.
First, he was beaten way too often for big plays. On gains of 15-plus yards, there was only one corner in the NFL who conceded more. Most of it came on concepts that specifically targeted his aggressiveness against him. Double moves and stutter moves that would bait Diggs and then attack it.
You may not know the Cowboys played more man coverage than any team in the NFL last year. But, this is where the individual and isolated attacks on Diggs were most successful. Again, he held up very well quite a bit and his success rate was very good. But, there are many plays in every game and Diggs played almost 1,100 of them.
We cut up some of his best plays and some of his worst ones to give you an example. You can see those and come to your own conclusions.
When you consider the entire body of work through two years, I cannot imagine anyone is willing to say that the massive strengths aren’t there. At the same time, it would be almost equally silly to claim that the weaknesses aren’t present as well. Yes, everyone gets attacked, but seldom is your best corner treated like an inviting part of the game plan to expose. At times, it was clear he was circled on the whiteboard in the opposing meeting rooms — and not for the right reasons.
He is an incredible talent and he is also a player with great “room for growth” and I think that leads us perfectly into our summary of where we are headed next.
Where we are headed:
We are headed into a big year for Diggs, for sure. If he can continue to be a ball hawk for a team that plays more man than anyone, he will get a dump-truck of money soon. Like we said, he does give up a good amount, but we cannot forget who he is asked to cover every week and also that most everyone who plays in this league is giving up quite a bit. Yes, Diggs gave up more than anyone else in 2021, but we shouldn’t overstate what that means. Would you trade 200 yards in coverage for three takeaways? Because every coach in the NFL surely would do that in a moment and not think twice.
Still, the big question lurks: Would he be as charming at $20 million a season? Because that is where an extension will start. You instantly determine he is one of your five most important football players when you hand him that check which can be done as early as next spring. Is it a no-brainer?
Because here is the truth about high interception guys in today’s NFL: there is very little repeatability to the big season. In other words, we have record books and there are two things that are extremely rare since quarterbacks learned to stop throwing so many picks:
1. Seasons of eight or more interceptions don’t happen much.
2. When they do happen, that is not the new normal. It is usually a big outlier season.
In 2020, Xavien Howard had 10. He followed it up with five. He is a true ball hawk, too.
In fact, there had been no other eight-interception seasons since 2017 when Kevin Byard and Darius Slay both reached that number. Byard has not gone beyond five since. Slay has only gotten to three in a season since. Marcus Peters is a guy Diggs gets compared to at times (unfair or not) as a ball hawk with holes in his game. Peters had eight as a rookie and while he has been productive since, he averaged 4.2 in his next four years (before being injured in 2021).
The point is simple. If you need 11 picks to justify the negative parts of the game, please know that Diggs would be doing something that has not really ever been done by doing it again. Interceptions require cooperation by other parties and if he somehow does it again, pay him as much money as he wants.
The plot twists could still be coming fast and furious. At the moment, I evaluate him as a definite piece of my future, despite the expenditures. I am aware of the issues on double-moves, run support and game theory, but I also recognize that a player grows from his rookie year and I know a complete game-breaker when I see one. We must understand that to give the money, we have to know he is a leader and a room guy you don’t mind handing control to because money talks loudly and on the outside we cannot truly know all that goes into that. Basically, I am telling you that I can see a defense going forward that builds around Diggs and Parsons.
But the research is still being collected. This season will either cement that thinking and we will start talking deals or perhaps we will have to really think this over a year from now.
There is nothing easy about being a top corner in this league.
