It’s not very often where I’m thrown off in my projections, in terms of what I was expecting a player’s value to be. Most of the time, we can gauge what area he’d be in the rankings prior to doing any projection at all. The one player who shot up my draft board the most after doing this process was Stefon Diggs. In fact, he was inside the top 20 wide receivers in PPR, while coming in at No. 24 in standard formats. Most of the time I’ll wonder why a player like this is being drafted outside the top 32 wide receivers, but as stated at the top, I understand why with Diggs.
Need more advice? Get access to our Draft Kit and Draft Wizard tools
There seems to be a pretty big split on Diggs within the community, with some willing to rank him as high as their No. 21 wide receiver, while others have him down as low as the No. 52 wide receiver. Unless you’re projecting him to miss eight games, there isn’t a logical explanation that you can give to put Diggs outside the top 40 wide receivers. Despite playing hurt through much of 2016 and missing three full games, Diggs finished as the No. 44 wide receiver in standard formats.
Injuries Affecting Output
Speaking of injuries, lets discuss just how much they affected Diggs’ production in 2016. He dealt with knee and hip injuries for much of the season, landing on the injury report seven times. Below is the chart on what Diggs was able to do in games on the injury report, as well as the games he was off the injury report.
| Games | Tgts/gm | Rec/gm | Yds/gm | TD/gm | STD Pts | PPR Pts | |
| On Injury Report | 7 | 6.1 | 4.0 | 37.3 | 0.14 | 4.6 | 8.6 |
| Off Injury Report | 6 | 11.5 | 9.3 | 107.0 | 0.33 | 12.9 | 22.2 |
The NFL offers small sample sizes that can lead to imbalanced numbers, but this is much more than “imbalanced.” There is a clear trend in these numbers and it all points to the fact that Diggs needs to remain healthy. Diggs himself has addressed that this offseason, saying his second season was a disappointment and that, “Injuries to your muscles should be preventable if you take care of your body.” He said his main goal this season is to stay on the field for all 16 games. If last year was any sign of what he can do when healthy, that’s all we want as well.
Lack of Touchdowns/Slot Duties
Last year’s success doesn’t automatically translate to future success and that’s why we do these profiles, so let’s look at the potential negatives. Diggs has scored just seven touchdowns on 196 targets in his career, and once Pat Shurmer took over offensive coordinator duties last year, he moved Diggs into the slot, almost full-time. Playing there has its pros and cons, but he did score just one touchdown under Shurmer over a span of seven games. This would most definitely lower his ceiling in standard formats, but wouldn’t really affect his ceiling in PPR leagues.
When playing out of the slot, a wide receiver’s catch rate will go up and likely lead to more targets, as well as allowing them to evade some of the best cornerbacks in the league, because regardless what some believe, a lot of top-tier cornerbacks don’t travel into the slot. Still, Diggs averaged 2.40 yards per route run from the perimeter while averaging 1.61 yards per route run out of slot (it did go up to 1.78 under Shurmer). It’s clear that if Shurmer keeps him in the slot for 73 percent of the time like he did in 2016, it’ll limit Diggs’ production from a yardage and touchdown standpoint.
Six Targets Too Much to Ask For?
If there’s been one thing consistent with Diggs’ career, it’s been that when he sees targets (slot or not), he produces. Here are his splits in games with six or more targets:
| Games | Rec/gm | Yds/gm | TD/gm | STD Pts | PPR Pts | |
| 6 or more tgts | 17 | 6.6 | 78.6 | 0.29 | 9.7 | 16.3 |
| 5 or less tgts | 9 | 2.7 | 31.9 | 0.22 | 4.6 | 7.3 |
Now of course his numbers are going to be higher with more targets (as they would be with almost every player), but as we did with John Brown in his profile player, we didn’t ask for many targets. Six targets per game is a more than reasonable number, especially considering the fact that it’s a number he’s hit in 17 of his 26 career games. He hit that number in five of seven games under Shurmer.
Did you know that Diggs finished as the No. 14 wide receiver in points per game in PPR formats last year? He averaged more than Jarvis Landry who is being drafted as the No. 18 wide receiver and 41st overall, while Diggs is the No. 33 receiver off the board as the 74th overall. It’s also important to keep in mind that Diggs posted these numbers while Adam Thielen finished as a top 30 wide receiver and Kyle Rudolph finished as the No. 3 tight end while leading all tight ends in targets. Oh, and Cordarrelle Patterson also saw 70 targets, who is in Oakland now. If you think Laquon Treadwell is going to see 70 targets, that’d be a wash, but I think you’re going out on a limb to project anything more than 50-60 targets for him.
2017 Outlook
With that being said, the Vikings did go out and sign Latavius Murray in free agency, as well as draft Dalvin Cook, suggesting they want to run the ball more often. The only issue with that is that their offensive line is among the worst in football in terms of run-blocking. They did add tackles Riley Reiff and Mike Remmers in free agency, but we’ve seen offensive lines take time to gel, especially in run-blocking. It’s hard to imagine an offensive line that produced just 1,028 yards on 324 carries (3.17 yards per carry) last year become a run-first team in 2017, regardless of two additions to the tackle positions.
The Vikings do have one of the best passing schedules in football, and while strength of schedule can vary year-over-year, Diggs will face just one cornerback who’s viewed as a legitimate shutdown option, and that is Josh Norman. They didn’t let him go into the slot last year, but the rumor out of Washington is that they’re going to let him shadow this year.
In their first year together, Diggs and Sam Bradford established a connection on the field, hooking up for a 75 percent catch rate on 112 targets, which ranked No. 4 behind Cole Beasley, Michael Thomas, and Doug Baldwin. There has been nothing but good reports about Diggs this offseason, and it’s not like they brought in another big name free agent to overtake him as the No. 1 option on the team. It’s also unlikely that Rudolph leads the league in targets again (though he’s also being underdrafted), making Diggs one of the best values in fantasy football in 2017. He’s not going to finish inside the top-10 due to his lack of touchdown scoring, but I’d argue that his absolute floor is top-30, making him a steal at his current ADP. My current projections have him at 92 receptions for 1,035 yards and five touchdowns, which is in the same territory of guys like Golden Tate and Jarvis Landry. The only difference is that you can get him multiple rounds later.
If you’ve missed any of the other Player Profiles that have gone up, you can see the full list right here.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS
Mike Tagliere is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeTagliereNFL.