The Stefon Diggs Trade: the Bills Pass the Baton

The Texans are now officially the NFL's Next Big Thing. But where does that leave the Bills?

It’s always something with Stefon Diggs.

He’s never making enough money, getting enough targets or receiving the right amount of deference and respect from his employers. The Bills never quite found Diggs’ Goldilocks Zone of money/stats/wins/adulation – he even spent the team’s late-season 2023 surge somewhere between deep dudgeon and the doghouse – making it hard to guess what organization can. Oh, and he’s 30 years old and carries cap numbers through 2027 that are rather hefty, if not hefty enough for Diggs’ tastes.

Photo by All Pro Reels, through Wikimedia Commons

From a resource-management standpoint, trading Diggs (and some loose change!) to the Texans for a 2025 second-round pick makes some sense for the Bills.

The NFL is not a 4X video game, however. The Bills don’t have 1,000 years to build their empire. They need to keep pace with the AFC powerhouses right now. From that cleats-in-the-grass perspective, Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott just did something they did not want to do: they traded the rights to Diggs’ services for nickels on the dollar. The fact that the ever-dissatisfied Diggs more-or-less made them do it doesn’t change the fact it was a bad deal for the Bills.

Meanwhile, Texans GM Nick Caserio, who was bouncing around the Patriots organization when they stole the disgruntled Randy Moss away from the Raiders in exchange for a box of donuts, just pulled off a bargain-hunter’s delight. The Texans added a 100-catch-per-year, perennial-Pro Bowl receiver in exchange for nothing in 2024.

The Texans have the cap space to buy a year or two of Diggs contentment in the form of a contract extension. They also have wunderkind quarterback C.J. Stroud to rekindle his interest in sticking with the program: it’s more fun playing for a team on the rise than a contender holding on for dear life. And if Diggs isn’t completely satisfied, history tells us he’s still good for 1,000 clockwork receiving yards.

The Texans receiver corps now includes Diggs, Nico Collins, Tank Dell, Jon Metchie, Robert Woods, Xavier Hutchinson and Noah Brown. The Bills receiver corps consists of Curtis Samuel, Khalil Shakir, Mack Hollins and Justin Shorter. The Bills’ WR1 and WR2 would charitably be the Texans’ WR3 and WR4. Compare the rest of the Texans and Bills rosters and you may find it hard to determine which team is better. 

Ah, but the Bills got cap relief, fewer headaches and a future second-round pick out of the bargain. Unfortunately:

• The worst way to achieve cap relief, especially for a Super Bowl contender, is to trade away Pro Bowl performers in their primes;

• That’s also the worst way to eliminate “headaches;” and

• A second-round pick in 2025 is not worth nearly as much as a second-round pick in 2024.

That final bullet point may be semi-controversial, because some analysts, having played too much Moneyball and/or Age of Empires, don’t realize that time is the NFL’s most precious resource and critical variable. 

The value of a second-round pick’s services in 2024 is worth more than those same services in 2025, especially for a top contender. A future draft pick could arrive too late to save a season or a coach or executive’s job. 

It’s easy to see the Diggs trade as a symbolic passing of a baton from the Bills to the Texans. The Bills went from next-big-thing darlings to Super Bowl shortlisters to the NFL’s most frustrating second-runners-up over the last five years. The Texans are now the next big thing, so it’s their turn to try to climb Mount Mahomes. 

The baton metaphor is an oversimplification, but not much of one. (It’s also a little trite, but this is a quick-turnaround essay, so it stays.) The Bills are now +700 to win the AFC but drifting backwards. The Texans are +850 with a bullet. The Bills made some shrewd moves to avoid a cap crisis this offseason, but they lost significant talent even before the Diggs trade. The Texans were not as good as their 2023 record, but they made substantial gains by adding Diggs, Danielle Hunter, Denico Autry and others.

From the beard-stroking perspective of a desktop analyst with the luxury to zoom out and ponder the far-flung future, the Texans have added expensive age to their roster while trading away future resources, violating the sacred tenets of theoretical roster management while risking delicate team chemistry. From 10,000 feet up, the Diggs trade is as perilous for them as it is sensible for the Bills. 

From the perspective of the folks who will be living and playing through the next two years instead of fast-forward simming through them, the Texans just got better, the Bills got worse, and the gap between them wasn’t all that wide before the trade.

Now if you will excuse me, the Texans are still +115 to win the AFC South, and I think I will play that before the odds change.