SAN JOSE, Calif. — Stefon Diggs, New England’s 11th-year wide receiver, was asked during Super Bowl LX Opening Night how much he’s changed over the course of his NFL career.
How different is Patriots-era Diggs from the young wideout who broke out with Minnesota, or the one who starred alongside Josh Allen in Buffalo?
His answer: not at all.
The only change, Diggs insisted in a passionate, two-minute-long response, is how he’s perceived.
“I don’t feel like I’m different,” the 32-year-old said Monday night. “Any team I’ve been on — you can ask my teammates, my coaches — I’ve always worked extremely hard. I’ve always been a professional. I mean, I love the game of football. They won’t say I didn’t work hard. They won’t say I wasn’t a leader. I’ve been that since I got in the league. I haven’t changed. I just feel like later on in your career, how people receive you is different.
“I can’t control people’s perspective from a young player to an older player. For me, when they say I’ve been different, it’s impossible. When it comes to people changing, when you get money, you become more of whoever you were. I got a contract however many years ago — my first contract — so whoever I’ve been, I would have been that times a million. People look at certain instances or certain plays or a certain sideline and start forming an opinion about a person that they don’t know personally.
“If you knew me personally, you’d know that I love the game of football, and I just always wanted to win. I don’t care how people feel about that, and it might rub a lot of people the wrong way when people just want to win, but it’s never come from a selfish place. I always just wanted to win. I didn’t care how it shook out.”
To that point, Diggs, who’s preparing to play in his first Super Bowl after near misses with the Vikings and Bills, said many Patriots fans likely view him differently now than they did when he signed last offseason. He was not New England’s first choice at the time, coming aboard only after the Pats struck out with Chris Godwin and other wideouts in free agency.
Coming off a torn ACL that ended his lone season with the Houston Texans, Diggs emerged as both Drake Maye’s top receiver (85 catches, 1,013 yards, four touchdowns in 17 games) and an important veteran voice in a position group that needed guidance.
“Here, it just kind of worked out in my favor that we won and we went far, so people are kind of receiving it differently, like I’m this brand-new person,” Diggs said. “But it’s impossible. People don’t just change overnight. It doesn’t take a year. It’s more so people’s personal experience with you. I bet you a lot of the Patriots fans, when I (signed) here, wasn’t too keen on me coming here or wasn’t too happy about it. But their opinion changed over time because they didn’t know me. I wasn’t on their team. I was on the opposite side.
“They might have heard this or might have heard that, but now they have their own personal experience with me, and I think they look at it a different way. A lot of fans come up to me and say, ‘I appreciate what you’ve done for this team,’ and I haven’t done nothing but be myself. It’s more so you’ve got to kind of self-reflect and look at, when you’re judging people or judging a player, take in everything that he’s probably been through and the situation that you’re judging.”
He added: “If you know me, you love me. If you don’t love me, it is what it is.”