While his departure from Buffalo a year earlier was messy, Stefon Diggs leaving the Houston Texans for the New England Patriots during the 2025 offseason was devoid of any drama.<\/p>\n
Leading into this week\u2019s divisional playoff meeting between his current and former team, controversy is therefore not on the menu for Diggs. As he told reporters at his Gillette Stadium locker on Wednesday, he had an enjoyable stint in Houston, even though his 2024 season was cut short by injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was cool. I had a great time,\u201d Diggs said. \u201cI have a lot of respect for those guys over there. Everybody, including GM, top-down coaches. Have a lot of respect for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately for me, I got hurt, but fortunate enough I landed here. So, I feel like, growing pains, you learn from a lot of things. that you go through. I trust where I am right now, where God\u2019s placed me, and I\u2019m I\u2019m happy to be where I\u2019m at. Learned a lot from it, though. I had a good time at Houston.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diggs was traded from Buffalo to Houston in April 2024 and quickly became a mainstay in the Texans\u2019 offense, both as a volume receiver and a team leader. However, in October, while on track for another 1,000-yard season, he suffered a non-contact ACL tear that put an end to his season.<\/p>\n
The story from that point on is well known. Diggs had a successful rehab, joined the Patriots on an incentive-laden three-year, $63.5 million free agency deal, and played a pivotal role in his new team returning to the playoffs and quarterback Drake Maye taking a massive leap in his second season.<\/p>\n
And while the 32-year-old is focused on the task at hand rather than a sentimental journey down memory lane, he is looking back fondly at working with the Texans and their coaching staff. One of its members stands out in particular given his own connection to New England, wide receivers coach Ben McDaniels, the brother of Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.<\/p>\n
According to Diggs, both brothers have had a positive impact on him and his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a lot similar in regards to how they\u2019re working and the time that they put in and how serious they take it,\u201d Diggs said. \u201cThey love football. I can tell it\u2019s a little brother rivalry there. We\u2019ll see how Sunday goes if they throw the gloves off or something or would talk to each other. But they definitely have a lot of similarities on how they approach the game and how serious they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciated my time in Houston. He\u2019s somebody that I actually have a lot of respect for. Spent a lot of time with him, learned a lot \u2014 how they do things and this kind of thing. I had a good time there, but I still think they got the older\/little brother thing, so we\u2019ll see how it goes.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While his departure from Buffalo a year earlier was messy, Stefon Diggs leaving the Houston Texans for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52113,91604,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-679398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-first-read","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-playoffs","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115899539509328787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}