Quandre Diggs had a special Thanksgiving. Why the new safety is special for Seahawks
The Seahawks had Thanksgiving Day off. No practice. No reason not to enjoy the holiday with family, friends and teammates.
Perhaps no Seahawks enjoyed it more than Quandre Diggs.
Thursday was the first time this decade that Diggs wasn’t playing a game on Thanksgiving. Diggs, the Detroit Lions’ captain until his trade to Seattle last month, watched his former team play its traditional Thanksgiving-afternoon home game against Chicago—while he played with his fourth-month-old daughter, Ariya Marie.
“This is my first Thanksgiving off in like nine years,” Diggs said this week, “because we played on Thanksgiving in college, also. It will be dope to get some time to spend with my family and spend with my daughter. That will be pretty cool.”
Diggs was a cornerback for the University of Texas. In 2011, when he was a freshman, he and his Longhorns played the final game in their rivalry with Texas A&M on Thanksgiving. Then in 2012, he and Texas played TCU on the holiday. In 2013 it was Texas-Texas Tech. In 2014, his senior season, Texas played TCU again on Thanksgiving.
Then after the Lions drafted him in 2015, four years of holiday games with the Lions in Detroit.
So, yes, Diggs is diggin’ the Seahawks (9-2) not playing this NFL week until Monday night’s home game against Minnesota (8-3). His girlfriend of six years, Abby Evans, and their daughter flew in to Seattle on Tuesday to be with Diggs on the holiday. Diggs and Evans met while he was studying and playing at Texas.
They weren’t having turkey on Turkey Day, by the way.
“I’m not a big Thanksgiving-food guy, so they always got to make me, like, alternative stuff,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of turkey and ham and stuff like that. ...
“Every year, it kind of switches. In Detroit, I used to go to (Lions cornerback Darius) Slay’s house (after their game) and he would have a chef make me some jambalaya and different stuff like that. I don’t know what they got in store for me (this year), but I’m excited.”
Diggs is far more excited about everything with Seattle than he was the day the Lions unexpectedly traded their starting safety and co-captain late last month.
At the time he got the call he’d been traded from his best friends, he was napping with little Ariya Marie. The jolt of the trade separated him from his young family, not to mention the only NFL team he’d known.
Then upon his arrival to the Seahawks his new team’s medical staff found the hamstring injury he’d gotten in week four of this season with the Lions was worse than what he should have been playing through with Detroit. Eager to make a fast impression with Seattle and his new teammates, Diggs instead sat out his first two games with Seattle.
How’s he managed that idling and recovery while being separated from his daughter this last month?
“A lot of FaceTime calls during the day. Heck, any break I get I try to FaceTime, just so she can hear my voice,” he said. “As much time I can spend with her, I try to.
“I know during the years that football time is always football. I try to put as much time in as I can.”
His girls are going to see Diggs playing Monday night—in a starring role.
Watching his first two games at free safety for Seattle—the division win at San Francisco then last weekend’s shutdown of the Eagles in Philadelphia—plus talking to the team’s coaches and players, it’s obvious the Seahawks love them some Quandre Diggs.
“It’s been great. He’s not a rookie. He’s not a young guy. He’s a guy that has been playing in the league for quite some time, so he was able to pick it up pretty fast,” All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “I’ve known him from the football world. We were able to communicate really, really quick, and he’s been good.
“Yeah, he’s definitely really intelligent from a football standpoint, for sure. He went to Texas and people from Texas think that that’s where football was made, but (my native) California has something to say about that. But you can tell that he knows the game, understands the game, studies the game. He’s passionate about the game. He loves what he’s doing.
“I think that’s the way he’s able to communicate the way he’s been able to communicate, because he’s passionate about what he does and believes in the guys that he’s playing with.”
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll has had his eye on Diggs since the defensive back’s second season in Detroit. In 2016, Diggs got his first action as a free safety after all his years as a cornerback. But the last couple of years he’d played strong safety for the Lions, and that’s what most of the rest of the league saw him as.
Not Carroll.
He remembered how Diggs impressed him as a wider-ranging, deeper-playing free safety. How quick he was to the ball. How intelligent he was reading what offenses were trying to do. And how, because he was so confident, Diggs took aggressive, calculated risks at the back of the secondary that usually paid off.
In that way, Diggs reminded Carroll of Earl Thomas, the All-Pro safety the Seahawks let leave this spring to sign with Baltimore, following his broken leg last season.
So when Diggs got past the hamstring injury, Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. teamed Diggs at free safety with versatile veteran Bradley McDougald at strong.
In his first game, Diggs made definitive tackles and intercepted Jimmy Garoppolo, and Seattle beat the previously unbeaten 49ers in overtime.
The entire defense, front line to back, is benefiting from the combined 12 NFL seasons between Diggs and McDougald.
“He and McDougald are working well together,” Norton said. “Two smart, veteran football players on the back end really solidifies what goes on back there. The communication is solid. Everybody’s on the same page. You can see when everybody’s working together.
“You have veterans back there who know what they’re doing. You get a high level of performance.”
Carroll has a safety through his playing days in 1971 and ‘72 at the University of Pacific. He began his coaching career as a college defensive backs coach in the 1970s.
So, yeah, he’s been right about Diggs as a free safety.
“Yeah, I saw him at least three years ago and he jumped out at me that he was just running all over the place drawing attention to the style of play,” Carroll said. “When I saw him that long ago, I’ve always just kept track of him because I thought he was a rare player in what he was willing to try to do.
“Some guys play by the book and they’re really conservative. He’s not. He’s been a guy that’s going for it, which demonstrates the confidence and kind of the history that he’s been through. He’s probably always been a terrific all-around player in whatever he’s done. It shows in his play.
“He’s a nice player.”
So nice, Carroll is already doing for Diggs what he did for Thomas in his starring years on the Seahawks. The coach is showing Diggs’ highlighting plays from the back of the defense at the start of team meetings, to both set an example and fire up his players.
What’s it like for Diggs having a 68-year-old head coach you lines up with him and works drops and footwork of being a safety with him?
“Oh, yeah. It was dope. I love that he’s a DB coach by trade,” Diggs said. “He knows what’s supposed to be going on. Most of the time, when he is talking to me, it’s more about just settling me down. Just telling me to go out there and play fast and have fun. That 49ers game was my first real game where I’ve been healthy, and I felt like myself since week three of the season. He was just calming me down and telling me to go out there and play my game.
“He’s always trying to compete with me before the game on who has better breaks and stuff like that. He’s not too bad.”
Diggs is the third strong safety Seattle’s had this season, after Thompson and (for the game against Tampa Bay) rookie second-round pick Marquise Blair.
Health willing, Diggs is going to be the last free safety Seattle has, for years to come. He has two years after this one and $10.35 million in salary remaining on the contract the Seahawks inherited from Detroit.
And that’s very OK with him. After the rocky start and the sadness of being separated from his girls, Diggs is diggin’ Seattle.
“It’s super exciting. Any time you can be on a winning team in the NFL is huge,” he said. “It’s hard to win games each and every week. Since I’ve been here, the energy, the vibes, everything about this team has been first-class. I’ve just enjoyed every second of it.
“I don’t take any of it for granted because there was a point in my career where, my second year, I think we were 9-4 at Detroit. I kind of took it for granted and thinking this is what it’d be; you always win, this is what it’s always supposed to be like. Then, you have those tough seasons and then you realize everything’s not going to go smooth like you want it to.
“I’ve just been soaking in these moments and enjoying it all. Loving the vibes around here. These guys let me be myself. I just want to go out, have fun and joke around while playing football.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 9:30 AM.
