Patriots Stock Watch: Stefon Diggs Looking More Involved As Season Nears

Patriots stock watch: Stefon Diggs looking more involved as season nears originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Patriots had one final practice at Gillette Stadium ahead of their preseason finale, and it featured plenty of competitive starter-on-starter reps.

Let’s take a quick look at who shined… and who didn’t.

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Stock Up

K’Lavon Chaisson, OLB

When on the field and healthy, Chaisson has been perhaps New England’s most consistently disruptive edge rusher since being signed in the offseason. He had another solid day on Tuesday, running with starters opposite Harold Landry III, and picking up a “sack” of Drake Maye in 11-on-11 work. 

“You put the tape on, you see how athletic this kid is,” outside linebackers coach Mike Smith said. “You can find gold in some guys like that in free agency.”

Christian Barmore, DT

The more Barmore plays, the more he seems to look like his old self. In Minnesota, he was one of the lone bright spots on Day 2 of practice defensively, generating pressure when the rest of Mike Vrabel’s unit was relatively quiet. 

On Tuesday, in 11-on-11 periods against starters, he picked up two more sacks. He’s hard to handle for interior linemen, and he even aligned over tackles on occasion. Easy to see why Milton Williams is excited to pair with him. 

Stefon Diggs, WR

In two joint practices in Minnesota, with Maye dropping back to pass 48 times in 11-on-11 periods, Diggs was targeted just three times. On Tuesday, though, he was targeted the same number of times by Maye in 26 dropbacks. 

He was more involved, catching a pair of passes in the short-to-intermediate area, and being targeted deep down the field on an incompletion when he couldn’t shake Carlton Davis. Diggs also made a catch on a deeper crossing route from backup Joshua Dobbs. Perhaps, with the season more than two weeks away, Diggs is ready to ramp things up.

Stock Down

Pass protection

In Maye’s first 18 dropbacks on Tuesday, the starters on defense racked up seven sacks. Those plays should have provided some good tape for Josh McDaniels and his staff to comb through after the fact. More often than not, it looked like blitzes — twice by Jabrill Peppers, once by Robert Spillane, once by Davis — were what got the Patriots.

Were those rushers Maye could have identified more clearly for his line? Were they players the line should have had picked up? What about backs and tight ends in pass-protection? However they broke through, there seemed to be more free rushers into Maye’s space than the Patriots would want.

Linebackers in coverage

Two of Maye’s best throws of the day went down the seam to tight ends. One beat a blitz and found Austin Hooper completely uncovered. The next beat Christian Elliss up the seam when Maye attacked Elliss while he had his back to the quarterback. 

Seven of Maye’s 13 completions went to either backs or tight ends in coverage. Maybe some regression to the mean here after Spillane picked off Maye twice on Monday.

Julian Ashby, LS

The rookie long-snapper out of Vanderbilt was good enough to help both Patriots kickers to go 5-for-5 in their competitive field-goal tries on Tuesday. But just a few days after an imperfect snap (laces in) helped lead to an Andy Borregales miss in his team’s preseason win over the Vikings, Ashby had some wayward snaps while working with the punt team.

Worth wondering if the Patriots would consider bringing in a long-snapper or two for a workout.