Bills’ Reported Stefon Diggs Trade Has Obvious Benefit For Patriots

Stefon Diggs no longer is in the AFC East, and the New England Patriots have one less offensive star to worry about.

The Buffalo Bills on Wednesday traded their top receiver to the Houston Texans for a 2025 second-round pick, as first reported by ESPN's Adam Schefter. The Texans will receive a sixth-round pick in 2024 and a fifth-round pick in 2025 along with Diggs.

Diggs has been a crucial piece of Buffalo's offense over the last four seasons. He averaged 1,343 receiving yards on 111 catches in those four campaigns with a combined 37 receiving touchdowns.

In his nine career games against the Patriots, eight of which came as a member of the Bills, Diggs averaged 78 yards per game on six-plus catches and seven touchdowns. The Bills won six of eight regular-season games against the Patriots during Diggs' tenure in Buffalo. New England fans probably will not forget the Christmas gift Diggs gave the Patriots amid a nine-catch, 145-yard game in December 2020 or even his seven-catch, 104-yard performance in January 2023.

His departure from the AFC East is undoubtedly good news for the Patriots, though New England still has a long way to go to topple the Bills. Buffalo won the division the last four seasons, each since Tom Brady left New England.

A major reason for that, however, was Diggs. He was the clear top target (averaged 161 targets per season) for Josh Allen and he led the team in receptions each of those four seasons.

Gabriel Davis was the wideout with the second-most catches in the last two campaigns and he now plays for the Jacksonville Jaguars after leaving Buffalo in free agency. Allen will have a completely revamped group of wide receivers in 2024.

And the Bills, perhaps even more so than the Patriots, now are in need of starting wideouts let alone the WR1 skillset that Diggs provided. That's good news for Jerod Mayo's team and DeMarcus Covington's defense.