Before he played for the Buffalo Bills, Stefon Diggs was a member of the Vikings and started his career in Minnesota following a fifth-round selection made by the NFC North team. If we're going to make projections, why not make them based on uniform colors?
That might very well be the case when it comes to comparing Diggs to Baltimore Ravens rookie and first-round pick Zay Flowers, out of Boston College. For now, of course, that's pretty much one of the very few factual points linking both wideouts to each other. Minny players are clad in purple, and the Ravens don similarly colored threads.
Well, people smarter than me seem to agree with that sentiment, only adding a little bit more insight into what might be ahead of Flowers once he hits NFL fields for the first time and on a weekly basis starting next fall.
Zay Flowers’ footwork is CRAZY 😳
— NFL Rookie Watch (@NFLRookieWatxh) July 13, 2023
Flowers has spent his time this off-season training with Lamar Jackson and Odell Beckham.
One NFL executive reportedly sees “Stefon Diggs” type upside to Flowers’ game.
Many NFL scouts also reportedly believe Flowers could be a “1,000 yard WR”… pic.twitter.com/ogVQ71hbE4
In a message shared on Twitter last week, Bradon Deacon of NFL Rookie Watch commented on the Ravens' top draftee of the 2023 class saying, simply, that "Zay Flowers' footwork is CRAZY." Not bad for a start.
Deacon added the crucial comparison following that line, saying that an NFL executive "sees 'Stefon Diggs' type upside" to Flower's game. Color me excited, folks.
As Deacon pointed out in his tweet, the Ravens would gladly take those projections and not complain about them in the slightest of ways: Marquise Brown is the latest receiver to have a 1,000+ yard season for the franchise.
In fact, Brown joined that list in 2021 when he barely cleared the mark with 1,008 yards through 16 games. That list, by the way, only includes three other players posting 1,000-yard figures in the past 10 years as the Ravens have never really had a super talented wideout playing for them for ages--if ever.
The algorithm over Player Profiler has Washington Commanders' wide receiver Jahan Dotson as the best comparable player to Fowers based on a series of metrics. If you keep going down the rabbit hole, though, Dotson's best comparable on that site is superstar receiver Tyler Lockett.
To know more about this one, we can only wait. In order for Flowers to fulfill the prophecy of reaching Diggs' heights, if only in his rookie season, he would need to catch 52 passes for 720 yards while scoring 4 TDs.
Can he do that? Sit back, relax, and watch, because we bet that's happening.