What Stefon Diggs mentioned about closing in on 1000-yard season

New England Patriots

With one recreation left, Diggs wants 30 extra yards to get his seventh 1000-yard season in eight years.

Kyle Williams leaned in opposition to one in all customer’s lockers at MetLife Stadium as he made a temporary look at Stefon Diggs’s postgame press convention to ask a query after the Patriots’ 42-10 win in opposition to the Jets.

“That catch you had on the sideline,” Williams mentioned. “It was most likely gained of the perfect catches I’ve seen with my very own two eyes. How had been you feeling? Speak me by way of that.”

Late within the first quarter, Maye launched a move on the run in Diggs’s course down the sideline. The throw was a bit quick, so Diggs needed to flip round and elevate over New York’s Qwan’tez Stiggers to snag it.

“I’m feeling like Austin Hooper, man, he made a hell of a catch earlier this 12 months,” Diggs mentioned, shouting out one in all his teammates and yelling to others that he was conscious it was virtually time to go house. “I’m simply attempting to make performs, man. It gained’t be my final catch and hopefully we’ll watch it on tape and be like ‘alright, that was good.’”

The 31-yard catch was Diggs’s longest of the day, as he recorded his second-straight 100-yard efficiency.

Regardless of catching all six of his targets for 101 yards and a landing, Diggs felt like he nonetheless left some juice on the desk after the Patriots’ starters had been pulled early in the course of the blowout win. The productive day put him simply 30 yards away from his seventh 1000-yard season in eight years.

“We didn’t get to complete the sport in the present day,” Diggs mentioned. “I used to be even telling my teammates I used to be slightly mad at myself that I didn’t squeeze the lemon. Now we have slightly rule: squeeze the lemon and make fruit punch. I didn’t ask for lemonade.”

“I simply really feel like I want I received extra out of the alternatives that I did get however I’m grateful, coming into this factor with gratitude. All through this season, I’ve approached it that method being within the mind-frame of being the perfect teammate that I might be. It’s turned a nook for me.”

With Sunday’s victory, the Patriots have now gained 12 of their final 13 video games. New England at the moment sits atop the AFC East and continues to be within the combine for the AFC’s high seed with one recreation to play.

“We are saying this on a regular basis, that your finest gamers should play good so as so that you can win and I’d think about Hunter [Henry] and Stefon a few of our higher gamers and in order that’s type of what you get,” coach Mike Vrabel mentioned. “That’s the Nationwide Soccer League, and so they know that we want their finest efforts every week, and that’s what we received.”

Each Diggs and Vrabel mentioned the staff spoke about “unfinished enterprise” forward of Sunday’s win. With one recreation left earlier than the playoffs, the Patriots have an ideal 8-0 report on the street and significant soccer left to play.

“I really feel prefer it began in coaching camp, if you construct an identification and check out to determine what you’re good at and what you won’t be as robust at,” Diggs mentioned. “Simply type of banding collectively all through that season. It was a troublesome street. There have been quite a lot of shut video games, even beginning out … Now that we quick ahead up to now it’s carrying that identification and staying true to what we consider in, working laborious and ending. We’re heading in the right direction, let’s simply say that.”

Khari A. Thompson

Sports activities Reporter

Khari Thompson covers skilled sports activities for Boston.com. Earlier than becoming a member of the staff in 2022, Khari lined faculty soccer for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.