Rick Spielman has been in Brandon Beane's shoes. In 2020, as the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, Spielman traded Stefon Diggs to the Buffalo Bills, who earlier this week traded the talented receiver to the Houston Texans in a move that Spielman doesn't quite understand.
Specifically, what the Bills got in return for Diggs (a 2025 second-round pick while also giving Houston two future late-round draft picks) and the unprecedented dead money (just over $31 million) Buffalo will now have to stomach by dealing Diggs is what Spielman is struggling with.
"To be honest with you, this took me back a little bit," Spielman told co-host Ryan Wilson on the "With the First Pick" podcast. "Just by the amount of dead money that they're going to have to eat that's going to hit against their cap, and the draft capital they got for Stefon Diggs that wasn't much more. Traded a couple of nickels on the back end, but didn't get a second-round pick until 2025.
"Going into this draft, they only have a first-round pick and a second-round pick and they don't have another pick in the top 100."
Because of those optics, Spielman believes that this trade was largely intangibly motivated.
"I think the question that comes to play is that relationship with the [Bills'] locker room, the quarterback, the coaching staff," Spielman said. "Did this have anything to do with them changing offensive coordinators midseason? When you watched him last year, his production went down the second half of the season and into the playoffs. Is it worth the amount of money they're paying him for the production they got? Whether that was his fault or not, whether that was the new scheme under Joe Brady, the new offensive coordinator, those are all talks behind the scenes.
"What I can tell you is how difficult those decisions are. If you're technically giving away a Stefon Diggs for the value they got and the cap value that they're going to take, there are other underlying issues behind closed doors that will probably never become public, and you've kind of seen some of that a little bit with that disgruntledness on the sideline with Josh Allen. Some of the rumblings during the last two offseasons, so he ends up in Houston."
While the Bills begin the process of trying to find his replacement, Diggs is off to Houston, where he will join forces with C.J. Stroud, who is coming off arguably the greatest rookie season by a quarterback in NFL history. Fresh off a surprising run to the AFC divisional round, the Texans have loaded up their roster this season with the additions of Diggs, running back Joe Mixon and defensive ends Danielle Hunter and Derek Barnett, among others.
"They're not looking to win the AFC South, they're looking to go try to push the Kansas City Chiefs and try to win the AFC and try to get to the Super Bowl," Spielman said. "The way C.J. Stroud played last year, they're kind of accelerating their program and putting all their chips in to see if they can make a run for this thing next year as well."
So, what kind of player are the Texans getting?
"They're getting a very good football player, but he's coming towards the downsides of his career," Spielman said of Diggs. "There's no question about his competitiveness.
"I know when he goes to Houston, you're gonna get the best version of Stefon Diggs you can get, because he's going to be motivated, he wants to prove a point, he's going to a good football team. We'll see what happens down the road, but I know for next year, you'll get a very good football player and you'll get the best Stefon Diggs has to give."
