There are plenty of stories in the NFL that follow a similar path: A player is a captain consistently from high school to college to the pros. Teams will make note of it ahead of the draft as they look for intangibles such as leadership and character. They draft one of those players, and soon enough, he is voted a captain again.
Stefon Diggs did not take that path.
When the seventh-year wide receiver was voted a Bills captain this season, he was a bit taken aback. He wasn’t a captain in his five years with the Vikings. He wasn’t a captain at University of Maryland. He had to look all the way back to high school, and even that came with an asterisk.
“In high school, but I mean in high school, the best player would be the captain,” Diggs said.
But then he caught himself.
“Matter of fact, I don’t even think I was a captain then,” he laughed. “You’d have to ask my old coach.”
Andy Stefanelli actually has to think about it for a second. Now the head coach at Our Lady of Good Counsel, he met Diggs years ago, when Diggs was an incoming freshman, and he was an assistant coach with the school’s JV team. Stefanelli witnessed all Diggs accomplished at the private school in Olney, Maryland. But he couldn’t recall Diggs being a captain.
“I don’t think he was,” Stefanelli told The Buffalo News. “He was definitely the star player, and all of the kids respected him. So, I think they viewed him as a leader, but maybe not a captain. He was definitely an alpha on the team, and well respected, but in terms of being named captain, I’d have to go back and double check.”
A picture of the 2011 team in Stefanelli’s basement confirms it: While Good Counsel had weekly captains – and Diggs likely was one of those – he was never a season captain. He made varsity as a freshman and immediately contributed, a rarity at the school and even in their league. But that extra title eluded him.
Diggs’ on-the-field accolades have always been clear. Last year, his first season with the Bills, he led the league in catches (127) and receiving yards (1,535). Both were good for franchise records and personal bests.
That he wasn’t a captain his first year in Buffalo is understandable. Diggs also can see reasons why at his other stops.
“I don’t know, I ain’t do enough of the right things,” he said. “Maybe it was just the situation or maybe – even with my old team, we had a lot of older guys on the team, and I was pretty young. So I was at the right place at the right time.”
But it wasn’t just that the situation changed. Diggs was very intentional about growing into this role.
Stefanelli sees it as a new level of maturity for a player who had huge expectations put on him even as a middle schooler. He saw Diggs learn to deal with an intense spotlight at a young age, a teenager who he knew he was a star. There were times Diggs would maybe lean into a big persona – one that pulled from parts of what Stefanelli calls a “naturally vibrant personality,” but one that also provided a bit of a shield.
Under it, Diggs was still just a kid dealing with a ton of pressure, and trying to live up to a public image that he didn’t always control. Years later, a new team and a new city let Diggs shed some of that.
Stefanelli hasn’t caught up with Diggs in a bit, but when he sees him play on Sundays with the Bills, the coach thinks he sees Diggs having more fun.
“He's kind of opened up and embraced this role. And it sounds to me like he's kind of opened up his personality, and let his guard down a little bit,” Stefanelli said. “You always kind of wished he would do that, because you knew that leadership, it was all in there. All of it was already in there, and it was just it needed to come out.
“So, I guess it's not really surprising as much as (it’s) gratifying, just knowing him as long as I have that it’s happening for him.”
He sees that Diggs was willing to work at it. Stefanelli thinks that even when leadership comes naturally, one has to cultivate it. So Diggs put in the work, the same way he would prepare for games.
One of the most important things to him was learning what made each teammate tick. He saw some of his teammates needed quiet encouragement, and some simply needed to be yelled at. It’s something the coaches at Good Counsel tried to do.
“Maybe for all that time that he was experiencing that, experiencing all the different types of coaching that he was receiving – even though maybe as coaches, we didn’t think he was listening, but he was really was – he probably absorbed a lot,” Stefanelli said. “And now it kind of sounds like he almost said he's starting to think almost like a coach. Like, ‘Hey, hey, what can I do for my teammates?’ ”
It took getting to know his teammates off the field on a deeper level, so he started doing that, too. Diggs FaceTimed other guys just to see how they were doing. He pulls on that rapport with the team now when things get hard.
When it was clear that the Bills would drop their season opener at home to the Steelers, Diggs sat by himself on the sideline in silence for a bit. Then he snapped back to the game, clapped his hands together, and started going around to all his teammates.
“Towards the end of the game, when the game was basically (over), the outcome was determined, (he was) going up and encouraging the players and getting ready for this week,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I think that says a lot about who he is and who he's growing into.”
Even ahead of this year, Diggs read more on different styles of leadership. And he wasn’t too proud to skip the basics.
“I think it was ‘Leadership For Dummies,’ or stuff like that,” Diggs said about his reading list.
“Or little quotes on Instagram, or quotes on Google, just as far as like – this was before I even got named a captain. I did a little bit of it last year, too. Just going on a new journey, being around new people. … It was like I started all over again.”
He was aware of the reputation he had when he arrived in Buffalo. He’d hinted at discontent in Minnesota ahead of the eventual trade, and he knew people noticed. It began to outweigh other contributions.
“It wasn’t until I wanted to do something else is when I became a bad teammate,” he said. “… Coming here, I had a fresh start. It was fair for people to make their assumptions or assessments from the outside looking in. That’s fair. I just look at it as in, when I get there, I’ll show them who I am, and we’ll go from there.”
He was ready for that reset, but also felt the stakes were high, especially when it came to his mental health.
“That could have broke me, as far as like going to a new team and things couldn’t have went well,” he said.
Instead, he quickly felt embraced by quarterback Josh Allen when the two met that summer. Meeting the rest of the team and getting through a few games continued to validate that welcome.
“After a couple of games, I kind of felt like, ‘Damn, this is kind of like my new home,’ ” he said. “In the beginning, I was scared to be the red-headed stepchild.”
Fast forward a year, and Diggs is now featured on the cover of SI For Kids’ “BFF Issue,” piggybacking Allen. The two connected for their first touchdown of this season in a 35-0 win over the Dolphins, as Allen extended the play on a scramble, and Diggs doubled back to bail out his bestie. Those plays aren’t particularly new for the duo. The main difference Sunday was that added C on Diggs’ uniform.
After all the steps Diggs has taken to do wear a captain’s patch, he feels the biggest change now is more accountability. He feels ready for that load.
“I got some small shoulders,” Diggs said, “but they’re kinda big.”
