HOUSTON – The Texans’ offense has already adjusted to life without Nico Collins when he pulled his hamstring and the NFL receiving yardage leader and $75 million wide receiver was placed on injured reserve.
Now, the Texans have to adjust to not having Pro Bowl wide receiver Stefon Diggs in the lineup Thursday night against the New York Jets in a road game at MetLife Stadium.
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The Texans are awaiting final clarity on Diggs’ medical outlook for the remainder of the season after he injured his right knee on a noncontact play Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts. There is serious concern about Diggs and worry that he’s potentially out for the season with several sources predicting a torn anterior cruciate ligament in a worst-case scenario.
He has undergone a magnetic resonance imaging exam and went immediately to the hospital after getting hurt Sunday. The Texans and Diggs are contemplating their medical options and haven’t made an announcement on his status. The best-case scenario for Diggs, per sports medicine doctors, would be a torn meniscus that would still sideline him indefinitely depending on if the injury requires surgery.
“For Diggs, we are still evaluating to see where he is,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said Monday.
Diggs will not play against the Jets obviously and perhaps he won’t play again this season, but that is still being determined and hasn’t been finalized.
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Voted a team captain in balloting from his teammates, Diggs established himself as a leader in the locker room. The players are taking the injury hard.
‘We don’t like to see our players go down at all,” said Pro Bowl left tackle Laremy Tunsil, whose locker is a few down from Diggs. “Hopefully, he’s good. We hate to see our brothers fall. We put so much into this game; you hate to see it. It happens.”
Diggs, a four-time Pro Bowl selection obtained this offseason from the Buffalo Bills in a trade, headed directly to the locker room as he walked under his own power.
“Prayers go out to Stef,” Texans Pro Bowl quarterback C.J. Stroud said before the injury was diagnosed. “You know him, you know God doesn’t make any mistakes. So, I hope he’s okay. I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I’m praying for him and hoping that he starts to feel better.”
Diggs caught five passes for 81 yards, including a 49-yard reception, on nine targets, for one of his bigger games since joining the defending AFC South champions.
“I didn’t really see what happened,” running back Joe Mixon said. “I just saw my brother down.”
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With Collins out one more game with sources expecting him back from a hamstring injury by a Nov. 10 game against the Detroit Lions following a speedy recovery and running 20 miles per hour in training sessions, Diggs’ injury represents a major setback for the Texans. They’ll lean heavily on wide receiver Tank Dell.
Diggs leads the Texans with 47 catches and ranks second to Collins with 496 yards and is tied with him with three touchdown catches. He was on pace for 100 catches and 1,000 yards before this injury.
Without Diggs and Collins, the Texans’ top wide receivers are Dell, Xavier Hutchinson, Robert Woods and John Metchie III.
Dell caught four passes for 35 yards on four targets, including a touchdown, as he bounced back from a zero catch game against the Green Bay Packers. Tight end Dalton Schultz caught four passes for 52 yards on six targets. Running back Joe Mixon had four catches for 32 yards. Metchie had three catches for 29 yards, Woods had two catches for 18 yards and Hutchinson had a diving 19-yard reception.
“I’ve been praying already for him that he gets back right,” Dell said of Diggs’ injury. “I shot him a text and called him. Man, that’s the name of the game. That’s my brother. I just pray that whatever happened that it’s something minor and nothing crazy and he can get back out there.”
The Texans are 6-2 and still legitimately haven’t played their best football yet.
“We’re all right,” Dell said. “We all know it can be way better. We know what we’re capable of. I know we harp on this every week in these interviews, but the sky is the limit for this team. We got to keep putting all the pieces together.”
Dell caught seven touchdowns as a rookie before breaking his fibula. After recovering from that injury, the former third-round draft pick from the University of Houston suffered a gunshot wound as an innocent bystander in a mass shooting at a party in his home state of Florida. He made another full recovery, but he’s off to a slow start to his second NFL season.
Dell has 24 catches for 229 yards and two touchdowns through eight games, averaging 9.5 yards per catch with a long reception of 23 yards.
Dell hasn’t produced as well as he did in his rookie year, when he was on pace for 1,205 yards before breaking his leg in December. Last year he averaged 70 receiving yards per game up until Week 13, but this season he’s averaging just 32 yards. He scored his second touchdown in the Texans’ win Sunday against the Colts and finished with 35 yards. His targets are way down, too, with the addition of Diggs.
Against the Jets, including cornerback Sauce Gardner, Dell is expected to be heavily involved.
“Yeah, I think he had a great mindset coming into the week, just getting better, owning his opportunities, and I thought he did a great job of that,” Stroud said. “He ran a lot of good routes today. Me and him are really close. We just want to feed off one another. It was good just to get our mojo back going. I’m just super proud of him, what he’s been able to do and he’s going to have to step up really big for us.”
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Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com
