Two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Trevon Diggs‘ NFL career is on life support entering what would be his seventh season in the league in 2026.
Diggs, 27, remains a free agent days away from the first full week of preseason action across the NFL. His latest look from an NFL team came Sunday when he tried out for the Detroit Lions, per the NFL’s transaction wire.
Detroit is dealing with the surprise loss of 2024 first-round pick cornerback Terrion Arnold after he was charged with four counts of kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery. The Lions could use more depth at the position in a major way. Yet Diggs remains unsigned.
Diggs being a check-the-treads-on-his-tires guy during what were supposed to be the prime years of his career is a tale of misfortune. He exploded onto the scene in his second season with the Dallas Cowboys in 2021 after being selected in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft, leading the NFL with 11 interceptions, including a league-leading two pick-sixes. That earned him the only first-team All-Pro nod of his career. Diggs followed that campaign with another Pro Bowl selection in 2022 after intercepting three passes and registering 14 passes defended.
Those back-to-back Pro Bowl years drove Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones to do something he rarely does: extend a star player early. He inked Diggs to a five-year, $97 million contract in training camp in 2023 with a year remaining on Diggs’ rookie deal, tying him to Dallas through the 2028 season.
Trevon Diggs’ downfall
That’s when the wheels began to fall off for Diggs. He tore his ACL in practice before the Cowboys’ Week 3 game at the Arizona Cardinals, knocking him out for the remainder of the season.
After thriving in defensive coordinator Dan Quinn’s man coverage-heavy defense with a league-leading 15 interceptions from 2021 to 2023, Diggs failed to find his footing in other schemes after Quinn left to become head coach of the Washington Commanders in 2024. He publicly complained about defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer’s defense causing him to “play a little bit slower” in 2024 before getting into a war of words with Dallas’ 2025 defensive coordinator, Matt Eberflus.
The 2025 season started on the wrong foot for Diggs after he opted to train on his own in Miami instead of at The Star, the team’s facility, while working his way back from a chondral tissue graft procedure on his knee in January of that year. Diggs’ decision to do so during voluntary organized team activities led Jerry Jones and team EVP and COO Stephen Jones to dock his 2025 salary by $500,000.
Then came the public scheme rebuttal.
Eberflus had Dallas running zone coverage on 86.6% of its defensive snaps through the first five weeks of the year, the highest rate in the NFL, according to TruMedia. The Cowboys played man coverage on just 7.9% of their defensive snaps during that span, the lowest rate in the NFL. That was a stark contrast to Dallas’ defensive glory years of the 2020s (2021-23 under now-Commanders head coach Dan Quinn), when the Cowboys ran man coverage at the third-highest rate in the NFL at 33.8%, per TruMedia.
After a slow start, Dallas deployed man coverage at a higher rate (14.1% of its defensive snaps) in a 37-22 Week 5 win at the New York Jets, in which the Cowboys had their then-best defensive game of the year. That’s when Diggs rubbed Dallas’ man coverage success in Eberflus’ face with his postgame comments.
“When we have pressure like that, we can call whatever. We can call prevent [defense] and it would’ve won,” Diggs said. “I definitely felt like it [playing more man coverage] worked. We got off the field. The D-line was getting back there so fast. We say when they get back there fast it’s called Instant Grits. You know how you make the Instant Grits in the packet? You don’t want oatmeal. Oatmeal takes too long. You want Instant Grits. We had Instant Grits [on Sunday].”
When CBS Sports asked Eberflus at the time about Diggs’ comments and whether they would lead to more man coverage going forward, the then-Dallas DC clapped back with a sarcastic quip about Diggs’ grits metaphor, saying he doesn’t like grits.
“We’re going to make the decisions based on what we feel is best. Based on the matchups, based on what we have. I don’t like grits either,” Eberflus said with a smirk.
Just a couple of weeks later, Dallas ruled Diggs out the Friday before its Week 7 matchup with the Washington Commanders after the cornerback suffered a concussion in an accident at his home. While Diggs was in concussion protocol, the Cowboys placed him on injured reserve because of a setback with his knee. They didn’t reactivate him until Week 16 as Cowboys coaches continually asked him to “do everything the right way.”
Dallas then waived him after its Christmas Day victory in Washington in Week 17, and the Green Bay Packers, the football home of Diggs’ BFF Micah Parsons, claimed him a day later.
Despite Green Bay being starved for capable cornerback play, Diggs played just one snap in its wild card round loss at the Chicago Bears, stumbling while attempting to tackle a Bears ball carrier.
What’s next for Diggs
The hope for Diggs now is that a team suffers an injury or two in the preseason and becomes willing to gamble on a diminished version of the once-All-Pro cornerback while hoping he can be a good soldier and keep the peace. His 20 career interceptions are tied with Lions All-Pro safety Kerby Joseph for the third-most in the NFL this decade.
An ideal landing spot would likely be the Commanders, which would reunite Diggs with Quinn and his older brother, Stefon. Outside of Washington or Detroit, it’s unclear where Diggs’ next NFL fit could be.
