Seemingly everything is unraveling for the Dallas Cowboys at this point, and the only real consolation they can take from Sunday night’s 30-24 loss to the 49ers is that it wasn’t as ugly as last year’s 42-10 defeat in San Francisco. Only it wasn’t that close. The Niners had a 27-10 lead through three quarters.
Anyway, Trevon Diggs is one of the Cowboys’ better defensive players. Alas, America’s Team was getting shredded by a Niners offense down to their third-string running back and missing a whole lot of other weapons. The ‘Boys continued to struggle without Micah Parsons and multiple other starters on Diggs’ side of the ball. Between the rather hopeless feeling that has to trigger and watching $60 million quarterback Dak Prescott — aka the real Stat Padford — I can see why Diggs’ frustration might boil over.
But yeah, feces hit the fan afterwards when Diggs stormed over to confront WFAA Dallas sports anchor Mike Leslie over a tweet that implicitly questioned Diggs’ effort on a play.
“Out of that whole play that’s what you took from that? You don’t know football. You can’t do nothing that I do. You can’t go out there and do nothing. Stay in your lane buddy. Stop clowning me, bro.”
When the reporter suggests that they can talk about the play more, Diggs answers with a classic, “Talk about deez nuts.” LOL.
So Trevon Diggs checked into this app before even taking the pads off last night, then beelined toward the composer of the tweet.
Very Cowboy-y.pic.twitter.com/GN0eDwk6tx
— Tyler Dunne (@TyDunne) October 28, 2024
Below you can find the tweet and play in question, along with some response from Leslie on Diggs’ blow-up.
Mr. George #NationalTightEndsDay Kittle!
📺: #DALvsSF on NBC/Peacock
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/VevMayJnBK— NFL (@NFL) October 28, 2024
What is Trevon Diggs doing on this play? https://t.co/YDBLTR9cib
— Mike Leslie (@MikeLeslieWFAA) October 28, 2024
Trevon just came out of the locker room to approach me about this tweet. He said I don’t know football, and I can’t do what he does.
He and I are in agreement about that.
He didn’t offer an answer as to what he was doing on the play, however. https://t.co/WaJJCRkFo5
— Mike Leslie (@MikeLeslieWFAA) October 28, 2024
I’ve been asked by my bosses at WFAA to provide a little context for this tweet, because they don’t want people thinking I just randomly tweet things like this. That’s fair. Thats not exactly a common phrase for me, as you might imagine.
The context: https://t.co/s2x4JI9FTi
— Mike Leslie (@MikeLeslieWFAA) October 28, 2024
Here’s a clearer look at the play, where Diggs could be accused of not striding out fully to track down George Kittle, or avoiding a more serious collision with the burly San Francisco tight end.
In the end, though, I think I’m on Diggs’ side. The concept the 49ers are running offensively calls for Diggs’ man to essentially run a clear route. That vertical push is meant to take Diggs out of the action and open up space for Kittle underneath. It took some crafty YAC and broken tackles for Kittle to make that play what it was, but by the end, Diggs knocked him out of bounds to save a touchdown.
Like yeah, of course you’d want to see Diggs come off his man sooner and keep sprinting as fast as he can to get there a split-second sooner. To me it looked like he was just playing his man, got a little confused, and thought one of his teammates would get Kittle down or push him OB. Malik Hooker looks like he was in far better position to make a play than Diggs and just ran out of gas or something.
In the end, I’m glad Mike Leslie poked the bear. Haven’t heard a good NFL-related “deez nuts” quote since Marshawn Lynch dropped a beauty in the credits for Bottoms.
