Returning to old home, Stefon Diggs was the pivotal Patriot

New England Patriots

A week after his finest game as a Patriot, with six catches for 101 yards in a 42-13 rout of the Panthers, Diggs relegated that performance to distant runner-up status.

By Chad Finn, The Boston Globe

October 6, 2025 | 1:25 AM

4 minutes to read

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — It must have looked so familiar, so achingly familiar, to the Bills fans that packed Highmark Stadium to the brim Sunday night for their undefeated team’s prime-time matchup with the Patriots.

There was Stefon Diggs, out there on that familiar turf, making crucial play after crucial play, as the most trusted target for a supremely talented young quarterback.

But these are different times. Diggs, who spent four seasons with the Bills, catching over 100 passes for more than 1,000 yards in every one of them while building an enviable on-field rapport with quarterback Josh Allen, is now in his first season as a Patriot.

And in the stadium he used to call his football home, he showed off his connection with his new quarterback, Drake Maye, whose ascendance to excellence might just be happening faster than Allen’s did.

A week after his finest game as a Patriot, with six catches for 101 yards in a 42-13 rout of the Panthers, Diggs relegated that performance to distant runner-up status.

In the Patriots’ stirring 23-20 victory, which sent a message to rest of the AFC and a national audience on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” that they are no longer anyone’s punch line or pushover, Diggs was both essential and sensational, finishing with 10 catches on 12 targets for 146 yards.

“I’m just so excited,” Diggs told SNF reporter Melissa Stark after the game. “Obviously this game has a way of teaching you a lot of things. I told everyone in the beginning of the game, ‘Band together. Lean on your brother.’ I’m just so proud of these guys. [Drake’s] first time in prime time, I can’t tell … I’m just happy to be a part of this thing.”

Diggs’s first catch, a 15-yarder, came on the Patriots’ first play from scrimmage. The final seven came in the second half — talk about leaning on someone — and no less than three must be considered among the most important plays in the Patriots’ win.

Diggs’s first immense play came on the Patriots’ first possession of the second half. The Bills, after a mistake-plagued first half, charged out after the break to take a 10-6 lead on Allen’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Curtis Samuel.

It was fair to wonder whether the Bills, who entered the game as the NFL’s lone unbeaten after the Eagles lost to the Broncos earlier Sunday, would take command from there.

But Maye (22 of 30, 273 yards, no TDs nor INTs while under frequent siege) led the Patriots on a 5-play, 74-yard touchdown drive to retake the lead. It began with a Diggs’ grab for 16 yards to the Patriots’ 42-yard line.

Rhamondre Stevenson capped the march with 4-yard touchdown, but that run was set up the previous play. With 7:21 left in the third quarter and the Patriots facing second-and-9 from the Buffalo 36, Maye rolled right (yes, under siege) and scanned downfield. At the same time, Diggs altered his route when he saw his quarterback was fleeing danger, turning and heading up field.

It was the exactly the kind of read a smart veteran receiver is supposed to make, and an indication that his chemistry with Maye is already at a high level. The result: a 32-yard gain.

On the Patriots’ first possession of the fourth quarter, Diggs broke off a 30-yarder — catching a short pass on second-and-11 and weaving through an assortment of lunging Bills defenders, finally getting hauled down at the Buffalo 6. After a run that lost a yard, Stevenson blasted in from the 7 for his second touchdown to put the Patriots up, 20-10.

Arguably Diggs’s most important catch was still to come. The Bills cut the Patriots lead to 20-17 on Allen’s 2-yard touchdown pass to Keon Coleman at 7:37 of the fourth, then tied the game on Matt Prater’s 45-yard field goal with 2:17 left.

Highmark Stadium was shaking to its concrete and steel bones, the momentum had shifted with the Bills’ 10 unanswered points, and the Patriots were facing a stress test of their own.

So what did they do? Simple. The got what would be the winning drive started in the most secure way possible: with a completion to Diggs, of course.

But the degree of difficulty couldn’t have been much tougher. Maye, chased right and soon clutched by Bills defensive tackle DaQuan Jones, unloaded the ball in Diggs’s direction just as he was about to be yanked to the turf.

Diggs caught the sinking pass, turned upfield, made a jitterbug fake and then another, and picked up 12 yards to the New England 41. It wasn’t the biggest gainer of the drive — that was a 19-yarder to Kayshon Boutte that brought the Patriots to the Buffalo 39 — but it was the stabilizer, turning what could have been a negative play into a first down. It set the tone for a drive that concluded with Andy Borregales’s winning 51-yard field goal.

The game might have been revenge for Diggs, who felt like the Bills — who traded him to Houston before the 2024 season — no longer considered him essential to their offense.

It might have been redemption, too. For four seasons, he gave Josh Allen a receiver to lean on. Now he’s doing the same for Drake Maye — never more so than he did Sunday night in his old neighborhood.