From the outside looking in, New England Patriots fans could only sit back and marvel at the dysfunction of their chief AFC East rival. The Buffalo Bills weren’t only in a Super Bowl window entering the 2024 season, they had blasted it open John McClane-style in Die Hard.

But after three consecutive losses in the divisional round of the AFC Playoffs, tensions unsurprisingly began to mount, mainly between quarterback Josh Allen and his No. 1 wide receiver, Stefon Diggs.

Diggs, of course, loses that battle 10 times out of 10. With the relationship clearly still broken during the 2024 offseason, and Diggs entering his age-31 season, the Bills traded their disgruntled WR to the Houston Texans for a second-round draft pick; they were so eager to push Diggs out of town, per The Athletic, that they took on the largest non-QB dead-money hit in NFL history at the time ($31 million), and actually sent the Texans a pair of late-round draft picks in the deal.

The plot thickened late that season, after Allen delivered a postgame quote that had an unmistakable undertone.

“It’s a fun and wonderful thing when you got a bunch of guys that don’t care about the stats, they don’t care about the touchdowns.”

Allen later clarified that his comments had nothing to do with Diggs, but let’s not kid ourselves here. The Bills slapped the “diva wide receiver” label on his back on the way out the door, and it chased him into the 2025 offseason, when, coming off a torn ACL, few contending teams were interested in his services.

Mike Vrabel and the New England Patriots were interested, though, and the result is becoming almost poetic as the Bills scramble to keep their AFC East title hopes alive behind Diggs and the 11-2 Patriots entering Week 14.

Stefon Diggs might be the glue that’s holding the New England Patriots together

Diggs and Vrabel had one thing in common — they both wanted to come to New England to work with quarterback Drake Maye.

The second-year quarterback is the main reason the Patriots sit atop the conference entering their bye week. He’s been almost superhuman with his downfield efficiency this season, and is spreading the ball around in a similar fashion to Allen’s “everybody eats” mentality out in Buffalo.

The thing with Diggs this year? He’s been noticeably happy and fully engaged, no matter who’s cooking in a given game. He leads the Patriots in both targets and receptions, but only by a slim margin over tight end Hunter Henry. His current pace for 922 receiving yards would be his lowest since 2017 as a member of the Minnesota Vikings, if you take out last year’s injury-shortened season.

His reaction on rookie Kyle Williams’ long touchdown reception on Monday night kind of says it all.

His main objective this season has been about helping New England’s young team learn how to win, and for that, he has multiple things in common with Vrabel. The Patriots’ head coach shared a message about Diggs on Monday that should resonate with his former team in Buffalo and every other contending team that passed on him in free agency this year.

“He has an energy and a spirit to him that I think the guys gravitate towards,” Vrabel said on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show. “But I would say the biggest thing, the thing I’m probably most impressed by, is he has the ability to laugh at himself.

Nowadays, it’s hard sometimes. He’s in the public eye, and you don’t have the ability to laugh at yourself, and you take yourself way too seriously. I appreciate that with everybody, and especially Stef. Whether guys are getting on Drake, or getting on Stef, I think that’s the thing I’m probably most proud of — if they make fun of me, then I have to laugh at it. I think that’s all part of it. It’s all part of being a team.”

Diggs might be one of the most misunderstood players in the league right now. None of us were behind the walls in Buffalo, but was he really upset about stats and touchdowns, or was he over his team’s propensity to fall short in the same playoff round year after year?

Here’s the harsh truth (for the rest of the NFL, at least): Vrabel and the Patriots saw through the labels with Diggs, and he’s become the ultimate glue guy for the best team in football entering the final month of the regular season.