Darrell Hazell has worked with numerous players in 33 years of coaching football, including the two he spent guiding wide receivers for the Minnesota Vikings.
He calls Stefon Diggs, with whom he worked in Minnesota in 2017 and '18, one of his "favorite guys" he ever coached.
"For a couple of reasons," Hazell said by phone. "One, he is a great team player. He's out on the practice field every single day, trying to make his teammates better, whether it's encouragement, whether it's competitiveness. But he loves his teammates and he wants those guys to be at their highest performance every time he takes a step on the field.
"The second thing is, he is an absolute competitor. He doesn't want to lose in anything, any drill. He was always first in line. I never, ever, ever had to ask him to work. He always came to work every single day when we hit the practice field."
The Buffalo Bills now get to see some of those qualities, along with the rest of what has allowed Diggs to establish himself as one of the most dynamic receivers in the NFL, for themselves. In March, they acquired him to be their No. 1 pass-catcher in a trade with the Vikings.
Despite Diggs' reputation, Hazell's feelings mirror those who have helped Diggs become an elite wide receiver, and reflect what Bills coaches say they have seen in virtual offseason meetings and his teammates noted during recent informal workouts in Florida that Diggs helped arrange.
"This man loves to work," Bills quarterback Josh Allen told reporters. "It was very, very awesome to see the amount of detail that he puts into his craft.”
That has been apparent to Pete Bommarito, a renowned strength and conditioning coach in South Florida who has worked with the receiver ever since he began preparing to enter the NFL from the University of Maryland in 2015.
"It doesn't matter if we're doing a warmup, he attacks each rep as if it's the Super Bowl," said Bommarito, whose facility hosted the recent workouts by Bills' offensive players. "He trains like he plays. When you have somebody with that kind of mentality, that's so serious about every aspect of what we do, it just makes our job easy. And that's how good and effective he is.
"And it's not just training. I truly think of the other things behind the scenes that aren't cool looking on Instagram, like when he comes in for an hour and does joint mobility and joint prep and muscle prep with my medical team. He does neuromuscular therapy and MAT (muscle activation techniques) and acupuncture, dry needling. He uses our chef and does our supplements. In terms of his sleep patterns ... I mean, every conceivable thing about how take your body, he does and he does to perfection."
Making himself better
The focus of Bommarito's pre-draft preparation work with Diggs was speed. The rap on Diggs was that he wasn't fast enough to be an elite receiver, despite leading Maryland with 62 catches for 792 yards and five touchdowns in 10 games in his final college season.
"I was like, 'Stefon you go to the combine and run a 4.4 (40-yard dash), that will shut everybody up real quick,' " Bommarito said by phone. "He had all the capability to do it. He just didn't really have an extensive track and field background. He never was with a speed coach before. He was sick and tired of hearing ... that he was more quick than fast. And you saw, right away. His mentality with that was spectacular."
Though Diggs ran a 4.46 at the NFL scouting combine, he was available until the fifth round, where the Vikings selected him. In his five seasons, Diggs collected 4,623 yards, which is eighth in franchise history, and 365 receptions, which is ninth, along with 30 touchdowns and earned a five-year, $72 million contract extension before the 2018 season.
Yet the perception was that Diggs needed to be traded after he missed practices and meetings early last season amid dissatisfaction with having Kirk Cousins at quarterback, and the Bills were among the teams that inquired about him at the trade deadline in October. His frustration continued throughout the season. In a playoff win against New Orleans, Diggs threw his helmet toward the bench in frustration in the third quarter because he had yet to be targeted. He finished with three targets in that game and five in a postseason loss against San Francisco.
In mid-afternoon on March 14, the first day of the legal tampering window, Diggs tweeted, "It's time for a new beginning." The tweet helped convince Bills General Manager Brandon Beane that he should check back in with the Vikings about Diggs. About eight hours later, Diggs was the Bills' new No. 1 receiver.
Vikings coach Mike Zimmer told NFL Network's Rich Eisen the team "really didn't have any intention of trading" Diggs and only did so because the Bills offered a first-round pick, a fifth-round pick and sixth-round pick this year, and a fourth-round pick in 2021.
"We were up against it on the salary cap, so we just felt like we could save some money, get a bunch of picks and maybe get a young receiver like (Justin Jefferson) that we got," Zimmer said last month.
In Hazell's view, Diggs' tweets shouldn't in any way suggest his presence will somehow create problems for the Bills and eventually find himself at odds with Allen.
"Sometimes, people misread (Diggs' displeasure with the Vikings) and take it as whatever they may take it as," Hazell said. "But he's a great team guy and his quarterback will love him. He'll want the ball in third-down situations, which, if you don't have a receiver that wants the ball, then you don't want that guy in your room. So, don't misconstrue competitiveness for anything else. ...
"He just has so much energy. He's the guy that I used to lean on to get the other guys going in terms of the energy. You’re midway through camp, guys are dragging a little bit and I just looked at him and he says, 'I gotcha coach.' And he was the one that charged the group."
Stefon Diggs has made contested catches one of his specialties. (Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
Signs of leadership, skills
Allen noticed Diggs' leadership during the workouts in Florida, saying that Diggs would explain to the young players how he ran his routes and what has worked for him.
"He's going to be a great guy in the locker room that guys can look on and he's going to be a leader for us, too," Allen said. "I think he's going to mix very well in with John (Brown) and Cole (Beasley) and the leadership that they have and the roles that they have. I really think it's going to be a great thing."
Hazell said that trait has been consistent throughout Diggs' career.
"He has no problem putting on a leadership cap, whether it's verbal, whether it's in his actions, whether it's demanding something out of some of his (teammates) and calling them out," Hazell said. "If you're not working, he has no problem calling them out. But he's (also) the first guy to put his arm around them and tell him why they need to work harder. So he'll be great with those younger receivers in the room."
Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll has gotten to know Diggs through videoconferencing as part of the virtual offseason training NFL teams have done because of the coronavirus pandemic. He is looking forward to the chance to work with the receiver in person.
"Stefon is a good football player, he's a good receiver, he's a good person. I'm glad we have him," Daboll said during a Zoom call with reporters. "We've had a quite a few conversations with him and trying to develop that relationship ... that is so important. We're well on our way of doing that.
"He's smart, he's been involved in all the meetings. ... He fits well into the room with our other players and looking forward to working with him come training camp."
What has made Diggs a 1,000-yard receiver in consecutive seasons, Hazell said, is that "in terms of his actual skills, there's a couple things that he does better than most people in the league right now."
- He catches the deep ball. Diggs led the NFL last season in deep receiving yards (targets of more than 20 yards) with 628 on 17 catches with seven touchdowns, according to Pro Football Focus. "He tracks the deep ball as well as anybody I've seen," Hazell said. "He's got good speed. He doesn't have phenomenal speed, but he has exceptional speed when the ball's in the air in terms of tracking it, bending his body."
- He has huge hands. Diggs' hands measured 10 inches at the 2015 combine, bigger than all but four receivers at the combine that year. Amari Cooper's hands also measured 10 inches at that combine.
- His innate ability to make contested catches. Diggs led the league in contested catch rate in 2017 and was second in 2018 with a rate of 64%. "That's what the game is about," Hazell said. "You're getting so much man-to-man coverage and you've guys rubbing up against you, and he's going to make that catch more than he's not. A lot more than he's not."
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As long as he has worked with Diggs, Bommarito still marvels at his intensity and level of commitment to doing all he can to make himself better and faster each year, especially with his rigorous offseason conditioning program.
Diggs told HBO's Uninterrupted that he attributed that commitment to his father, whom he said would challenge Diggs and his brother to do 200 situps and 100 pushups before they went to bed each night. When that became easy, he would add another 100. Diggs said that conditioned him and his brother to always keep striving.
"He's intelligent, he listens, he learns. And I think that's what makes him great," Bommarito said. "The Stefon you see Week One is the same Stefan you're going to see in the playoffs, because that's how immaculate he takes care of his body. Everything we implement and he learns in the offseason, he carries with him through the season and I think that's what makes him unique.
"He's just a freakish, genetic athlete. And when you continue to train and progress at high levels, here's a guy that probably hasn't even reached his peak yet, which is scary, as good and as fast as he already is."
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What drives new Bills receiver Stefon Diggs: 'He doesn't want to lose in anything' - Buffalo News
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