When Dallas lost Trevon Diggs to a knee injury two games into the 2023 NFL season, DaRon Bland was forced into the Cowboys’ starting lineup. Bland responded with nine interceptions, set an NFL record by returning five for touchdowns and made first-team All-Pro.
With Diggs returning for the 2024 campaign, Dallas will have a former first-team All-Pro at each cornerback spot. Diggs earned the honor in 2021 when he intercepted 11 passes, the most in the league in 40 years.
But this summer, when ESPN released a survey of “league executives, coaches and scouts” to name the NFL’s top 10 cornerbacks, neither Diggs nor Bland appeared. The Denver Broncos’ Patrick Surtain II, a former Alabama teammate of Diggs’, held the No. 1 spot.
Diggs figures he and Bland should have been “1A, 1B.”
“I feel like I’m in a league of my own,” Diggs said on Wednesday. “There’s nobody that can do what I do. There’s nobody that can do what Bland does. I feel like we’re in a league of our own, and that’s that. We don’t care about no list. Our work is going to show on the field. You can pull up another DB on that list that did anything that we did? Show me.”
Diggs said he’s “super excited to get on the field with” Bland as the former Crimson Tide cornerback continues his comeback from a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Diggs said of Bland’s showing last season. “I expected him to have a big year. His rookie year, he did really good, and you only could build on that, so I expected him to do really good last year.”
Diggs received medical clearance to return to practice at the Cowboys’ training camp this week. He said he’s working toward becoming a full participant “when I’m comfortable.”
“I can do everything right now, but just better safe than sorry,” Diggs said. “You know, we don’t win football games right now.
“I’m super excited. I haven’t played football in a long time, so just being able to be out here, just practicing with them, seeing everything, it’s been a blessing. I can’t be more thankful enough.”
Diggs said the hardest part of being sidelined was how the injury separated him from his teammates.
“You have that family feel when you come to practice and come to work every day,” Diggs said, “so me not being able to be there with the guys, I feel like that was the hardest part. I look at those guys like my brothers, so just being away from them, being away from the team, just not being able to go to war with my brothers, I feel like that was the hardest part.”
Diggs will be playing for a new defensive coordinator this season. After three seasons with Dallas, Dan Quinn left to become the head coach of the Washington Commanders. The Cowboys hired former Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer to take his place.
Diggs has been dropping into the breakfast meetings of Zimmer and Pro Bowl pass-rusher Micah Parsons at training camp in Oxnard, California.
“It’s been helpful,” Diggs said of the informal chats. “One day, (Parsons) just randomly saw me and was like, ‘Come on. Come to the meeting with me.’ I was like, ‘All right.’ So I went in there, and I’m learning a lot, and I learned the playbook fast just by going in there. …
“It helps the defense a lot because he’s got the guys up front, and I got the guys in the back end, and it’s a team effort. So you got this person on the front line, this guy on the back line, and we got (linebacker Eric) Kendricks in the middle, who’s really, really smart, knows the defense like the back of his hand. So I feel like we’re going to have a really good defense this year. Zim is a genius.”
The Cowboys kick off their three-game preseason schedule on Aug. 11 against the Los Angeles Rams and start their regular-season slate on Sept. 8 against the Cleveland Browns.
