RP Clips: How Will Stefon Diggs Fit into the Offense?

**Matt Harmon** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception, The Show. James Koh and Matt Harmon.

**James Koh** (0:06)
I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time, because we talked about these general numbers, like overall, like, hey man, if you could beat this man coverage at 70%, and hey man, if you could beat zone coverage at 80%, pretty good.
Can you talk about somebody like Stefon Diggs though, and the difference, like the timing of when he beats man coverage, or the timing of when he beats zone coverage? What I mean by that is, yeah, these numbers, I think, capture, like, what they do on a down by down basis. But when there are bigger moments, when there's a big third down, when there's a big moment in the game, it just felt like Stefon Diggs was more present, more available and somehow more open when the Patriots really needed him to get there. Can you talk about some of the, I guess, bigger moments for Stefon Diggs too?

**Matt Harmon** (0:55)
Yeah, I think that's definitely true.
You know, I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole on this, but I am not thinking about changing the way I chart, but I am thinking about evolving the process of charting and specifically incorporating some ways, you know, some ways like, yeah, third downs, big moments, stuff like that. I'm looking into that. I don't know if it will be this year or next year, what have you, but we'll see.

**James Koh** (1:30)
I feel like we need to play a breaking news alert or something here. What's going on?

**Matt Harmon** (1:34)
Well, I want to make the product better for people, and I do think that's a way to make the product better, is to incorporate some more of that stuff. So we'll see about that.
But that's something that I'm looking into in the back end of it. But anyways, yeah, I think there's definitely something to that, by the way, in terms of when he wins and those being big moments and everything. I mean, he's only really playing on, he's not playing every single down, right? So I think in that way too, that's already maybe biases itself towards that. But yeah, that's true.
I also, by the way, don't, when we talk about like 70% verse man, 80% success rate verse zone, and those are the benchmarks. I mean, there's a wide range there, and everything is very context-based. So that's what I would say is just like the quick and dirty easy way to like, all right, is this guy good at this, that, and the other? That's like getting your foot maybe not even in the front door, you're like maybe walking down, you're on maybe on the porch, you're putting a foot on the porch in terms of getting into the house there. So yeah, I would say that, by the way, just got a breaking news alert from Adam Schafter that Larry Meatonsil, unlikely to play during the regular season. So there we go. We actually got a news alert during the show, which is nice to see.

**James Koh** (2:45)
I like it. I don't like the news though.

**Matt Harmon** (2:50)
I think it's a little bit more of a Terry McLaurin part of this, because Terry McLaurin is a guy, certainly from a fantasy standpoint, I was really into this year. And I'm still into in some way, but I think his style of play is really impacted more from like a...
I mean, he's really, I think, impacted by Diggs coming here in general, because not only is Diggs still a really good separator, but like I mentioned, the particular routes that he wins on. I mean, he ran so many flats and quick outs last year for the Patriots and was unbelievably successful. I mean, his success rates on outs, 93.8% and flat 97%, while running those that are pretty healthy volume, is going to be some of the top marks in the 2025 database period.
His ability to get open quickly on those patterns, especially the quick outs, was really good against man coverage and provided a really easy answer for Drake May. Drake May, who definitely was under pressure a lot last year, probably took a bit too many sacks in his own right. He'd hit the top of his drop and just digs his open and right there available very quickly. I think that situation is going to be happening a lot for Jaden Daniels without Laramie Tunsell, another guy who already had a bad pressure to sack ratio at different points, especially as a collegiate player more so than in the NFL. But somebody that needs to have a better plan under pressure than just scramble and get out of there, I think Diggs would have been a big part of that. Diggs probably will be a big part of that this year. Whereas Terry McLaurin has been a vertical receiver for this team pretty exclusively over the last, especially the last two years. Really, this is a stat I noted. The last two seasons combined, Terry McLaurin 13.6 air yards per target. That is behind only Alec Pearce, Kaishan Booty, Calvin Ridley, Roma Dunze, and just ahead of Rashid Shahid, fifth most in air yards per target over the last two years combined. Definitely not gonna be getting a lot of those clean vertical looks without Laramy Tunsil in the mix here. The commanders will likely shift Brandon Coleman out to be the starting left tackle. He has started at left tackle for this team before in 2024 when admittedly the offense was really good.