Diggs has always been used to getting the last laugh on the football field. He decided he wanted to play in the NFL at all of five years old. “I said it with conviction too,” he says. “My mom will tell you some stories of teachers asking, like, ‘Oh, you need to have a Plan B.’ I don’t want to do shit else. That’s what I want to do.”
If his mom taught him about shoes and smiles, his dad, Aron, gave him a relentless drive. He remembers his dad teaching him that getting too high about what happened in the past would keep you from focusing on what was still up ahead. “Like, I don’t know what you’re celebrating,” Diggs says his dad told him. “Every win comes with what? A grain of salt. You could lose the next one. Every catch comes with what? You could drop the next pass. There’s always more for you to do. So my drive really comes from a constant chase for perfection.”
When Diggs was 14, his dad died of congestive heart failure the January before his son began high school. “I had to become a man,” Diggs says. “I had to learn how to sacrifice.” He knew he had a responsibility to help his younger brother Trevon, almost five years his junior. So even though he was a highly touted recruit after a stellar high school career, the standout receiver opted to stay nearby and go to Maryland. There, he was able to keep an eye on Trevon, while also instilling in him the same lessons about work that Diggs had learned from Dad.
After three years at Maryland, he was drafted in the fifth round by the Minnesota Vikings. He’d achieved his dream of making it to the NFL, but had to watch 18 receivers achieve it first. “I’m not a hater,” he says, remembering the 2015 draft. “I feel like everybody that went in front of me, y’all deserve it. But I always say, When the dust settles, I’m going to be probably the best receiver in my class.” His mentorship of Trevon paid off too: Little bro was drafted in 2020 by the Dallas Cowboys, where he’s already had two Pro Bowl seasons at cornerback.
I ask Diggs how he came to such a mature mindset—choosing to carry a heavier load rather than just get angry at the world.
“I didn’t have no choice—like, I couldn’t go get a new dad,” he says. “Of course, I had some shortcomings after my dad passed, with lack of vision and which way to go direction-wise. I was so young, I didn’t really know what to do. I just had to try to make it all make sense for my damn self.”
I begin to ask who he went to for help, if he leaned on his family, his coaches, or his faith, but he cuts me off before I can even finish.
“Myself,” he says. “I just hung my hat on, like, I’m going to get to where I want to go, because I want to get there. Not because of nobody else. I’m going to put the work in myself, not because of nobody else. Obviously, for my family. But I got to get there. I had a really clear-eyed view on the things I wanted to get done, and where I wanted to go.”
