After keeping quiet for most of the summer, New England Patriots star wide receiver Stefon Diggs had plenty to say right before the season began.
Diggs, who hasn’t spoken with the local media much at all during training camp and the preseason, broke his silence on Sept. 3 ahead of Week 1, and he started the rare media session by apologizing to reporters while trying to clear up some misconceptions.
“Obviously, I haven’t talked much in camp,” Diggs acknowledged to reporters. ” … I appreciate ya’ll, appreciate your patience. I just try to take this time to be focused, get my mind right, get my body right …. so I just needed that time. I appreciate ya’ll having patience with me.”
Stefon Diggs Addresses Reports About Him Being ‘Pain’ for Patriots
Diggs then singled out a pair of local reporters, NBC Sports Boston’s Tom E. Curran and Phil Perry, for how they interpreted Diggs’ interview with The Athletic’s Dianna Russini. That short chat led to an uncomfortable interaction between Perry and head coach Mike Vrabel about the status of Diggs for Week 1 against Las Vegas.
On an episode of their podcast, Perry wondered if Diggs was becoming a “pain in the posterior” early in his Patriots tenure.
“My words, I had some conversations, some interviews throughout camp, and some of my words were misconstrued,” Diggs insisted. “Me talking to another individual were kind of regurgitated another way or taken out of context. I think I was referred to a pain in the ass … obviously I don’t want to come across as that.”
Diggs added: “I’ll say this, I want to be very clear: I’m an adult. I’ll apologize, I’m not up here to ego trip, I’m not up here to rub anyone the wrong way or say anything for click bait. If I rubbed anyone the wrong way, I want to apologize. Moving forward, obviously we have a media-to-player relationship (and) I’ll be professional as I can be, make myself available each and every week. I don’t want this thing to be abrasive. It can be as seamless as possible. … I don’t want to get up here and not answer questions and make anyone feel uncomfortable.”
Diggs Hopes for Fresh Start in Foxboro
Diggs also made it clear he wanted a fresh start with the assembled New England media.
“It’s a world we live in if someone calls you an (expletive), you start acting like one. No you don’t. I won’t. That’s not me,” he said.
“So I want to apologize if I ever came across as an (expletive) to anybody, but moving forward, I want to get things off on the right foot. We’re gonna spend a lot of time together. I want to give a good interview if I’m asked questions. I don’t want to give you vanilla answers or no answer at all. Moving forward, hopefully this relationship can grow, and we build on something special. It’s going to be a long season so we’re gonna spend a lot of time together.”
Diggs then went on to speak for nearly 10 minutes in a back-and-forth with reporters, including Curran and Perry, who also both apologized to Diggs to kick off the question-and-answer portion of the presser.
“Everybody has a job. I just want to, hopefully I’m not being painted in a negative light when I haven’t rubbed anything the wrong — or done anything. I don’t want to be that guy.”
As far as actual on-field developments, the $69 million offseason signing is trending toward playing Week 1. That’s a huge development for not just the team but Diggs himself, who is working his way back after a torn ACL ended his 2024 campaign.
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