Stefon Diggs won’t be a Viking in 2020, but that doesn’t take away anything that he did with the team in 2019.
With the help of NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Nick Shook over at NFL.com ranked Diggs as the league’s third-best pass catcher of 2019.
Diggs had a catch rate of 67 percent in 2019 and an expected catch rate of 56.3. That’s a difference of 10.7 percent. That was the third-best difference in the league.
The only two players who ranked ahead of Diggs were Michael Thomas and Tyler Lockett.
Here’s a bit of what Shook wrote about Diggs:
In what turned out to be his final season with the Minnesota Vikings, Diggs caught just 63 passes but outgained Lockett in receiving yards, riding a yards-per-reception rate of 17.9 to 1,130 total yards (compared to Lockett’s 1,057). His catch percentage wasn’t nearly as high as Thomas’ or Lockett’s, but he made the most of his opportunities, posting a +10.7 percent catch-rate difference — and he did so by winning press challenges. Diggs was pressed on 42 percent of routes run, enjoying just 2.5 yards of separation on average, yet his targets came with an air-yards average of 14.9.
The Vikings are hoping that Adam Thielen and Co. can help make up for the loss of Diggs. That includes rookie Justin Jefferson, who the Vikings took with the first-round pick they acquired for Diggs, and free-agent signee Tajae Sharpe.