Here’s how Trevon Diggs performed in his Green Bay Packers debut

We’re staring down the barrel of just the third ever Green Bay Packers-Chicago Bears playoff game in NFL history, and the Packers just played their junior varsity unit against the Minnesota Vikings. Generally, I don’t want to write too much about Green Bay’s Week 18 effort, but we should mention that seven players made their Packers debuts last week. This includes cornerback Trevon Diggs, whom I’ve been hit up about non-stop for an opinion of.

So, here are all of the coverage clips that Diggs had on Sunday so that you can evaluate him yourself. He’s at the right cornerback position (wearing number 28) for the defense.

I have a couple of thoughts on Diggs’ performance.

Let’s start with alignment. Notably, right cornerback is the position that Carrington Valentine plays on the defense, as Keisean Nixon is the left cornerback (Green Bay doesn’t really move players around at cornerback and I don’t think they’ll plan to as long as the league-wide meta is to play off zone coverage to stop offenses who utilize receivers lining up inside the numbers and lean into play action). So if Diggs is going to replace anyone in the cornerback room, barring an injury, I’d think that it would be Valentine, not Nixon. I’m still not convinced that Diggs has a true opportunity to start in the postseason, but I guess we’ll just see.

I also want to point out that Diggs only played the first half of the game. Clearly, and unsurprisingly, he’s ahead of the practice squadders on the depth chart. Valentine was spared from playing in Week 18, while Nixon played five snaps. LaFleur said today that the team was going to sit Nixon for Week 18 as part of the team-wide injury prevention plan, but Nixon approached LaFleur with the idea of him starting the game. LaFleur’s response was to say yes, but that Nixon would then have to play the entire first drive, which Nixon did.

From a “what is standing in Diggs’ way of playing time” standpoint, beyond the depth chart, there are really two things I wanted to see.

The Packers are a pretty basic spot drop zone coverage team, so it’s not like he doesn’t already know the techniques there. He’s probably been doing that since he was in middle school. Green Bay’s change-up is that they use some disguise coverages, which is not something every NFL team leans into (hell, the 2025 Packers didn’t lean into it as much as the 2024 Packers because the ball was coming out so quickly with teams hyper-worried about Micah Parsons on the edge).

Diggs was able to execute a few disguise looks that were sprinkled in, like playing as a press cornerback pre-snap but bailing to cover the deep half of the field in Green Bay’s inverted Cover 2 looks. That’s a box that’s checked. Diggs also seemed to communicate well, passing off in-cutting routes, which is why you’ll see him point a couple of times mid-play.

The other hurdle I would want to know is how he handles the verbiage of the system, as far as the blitz looks go. That’s really where things get wordy.

I’ve lost the clip now, but they used to have college coaches on a stream for the national championship game. At one point, Dana Holgorsen (an Air Raid offensive coach) asked Gary Patterson (a legendary defensive coach) if his linebackers still stare at their wristbands for 20 seconds when they’re about to blitz. When you blitz, you have to communicate who the extra player rushing is, how the coverage will make up for it and likely a stunt up front. That’s where calls get long. The Packers didn’t do a whole lot of blitzing in this game, so it’s hard to know where he stands there.

As far as the on-field performance went, he looked solid. He wasn’t targeted a lot, giving up just one catch on his first coverage snap of the game when he played off coverage zone against Justin Jefferson. Not really his fault. I’m sure it will be credited as a Diggs target by those who assign blame by nearest defender, but it’s really just the Vikings calling a play that hit the area between zones.

Diggs didn’t have any coverage busts, played through the whistle (there’s some pursuit plays in there and scramble drill stuff too) and even covered a couple of double moves. I wouldn’t make too much of his coverage snaps against Minnesota, but he doesn’t look like a fish out of water.