With training camps still a step away, the Stefon Diggs rumor mill has room to spin. But for the Seattle Seahawks, the answer looks pretty simple: don’t do it.
Diggs may still have enough juice as a receiver to tempt teams looking for help, and Seattle does have some uncertainty in its wideout group behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Even so, the fit with this version of the Seahawks feels all wrong.
That’s because the organization has changed. Under Pete Carroll, Seattle was willing to roll the dice on players who needed another shot, even when they weren’t obvious cultural fits.
Carroll no longer makes those calls. He hasn’t for more than two years.
Now John Schneider runs roster control, with input from coach Mike Macdonald.
And that shift matters.
The Seahawks’ moves last offseason showed exactly what kind of team they want to be. Geno Smith and DK Metcalf were dealt after viewing themselves as bigger than the team and asking out.
Seattle moved on, and it worked out better for the club. Smith’s new team, the Las Vegas Raiders, finished 3-14, which led to Pete Carroll being fired after one season as the franchise’s new coach, and Smith was traded to the New York Jets.
Metcalf’s new team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, also fell short of a title. Meanwhile, Seattle won a Super Bowl.
Schneider filled those spots with Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp, two players described here as having relatively little ego and as clearly team-first. That’s the kind of profile Seattle appears to want now. It is not the profile Diggs brings.
Diggs has been productive, but the off-field noise has followed him, from paternity tests to physical abuse allegations. He was recently found not guilty of an allegation involving a personal chef last December, and he was also seen on video with a pink substance while on a boat. Whether or not those situations involved illegal conduct, they are exactly the sort of distractions Seattle has tried to steer clear of over the last year.
So even if Diggs can still play, the Seahawks have a bigger reason to pass: he just doesn’t look like a match for the current regime. And for Seattle, that’s probably the right call.