Breaking down the Terry McLaurin vs Trevon Diggs battle
Taking a closer look at how McLaurin and Diggs matched up over the two games between Washington and Dallas
There’s a narrative building that Dallas Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs has Washington wide receiver Terry McLaurin locked up. Washington has played Dallas twice in the last three weeks and McLaurin has a total of three catches for 40 yards over those two games, and one of those catches was a 19-yard gain when Diggs wasn’t even on the field. Diggs has undeniably had a good season and leads the league with 11 interceptions this season. The most recent of those intercepts came in Washington’s loss to Dallas on Sunday night, when quarterback Taylor Heinicke took a deep shot to Terry McLaurin on Washington’s first offensive play.
Washington looks to be aggressive early here, dialling up a 989 combination. The two outside receivers run 9 routes, or go routes, down the sidelines while the tight end runs a middle read, where he can either run the post and split two deep safeties, or break flatter over the middle against a single deep safety. Washington motions a tight end across the formation for a pre-snap coverage indicator. The Cowboys have their entire second level shuffle across rather than having a single defender follow him, which indicates a form of zone coverage. Just before the snap, Diggs bails out deep. As Heinicke drops back, Diggs takes a zone turn, meaning he turns his body inside to get eyes on the quarterback rather than focus entirely on the receiver.
With this position, Diggs stays on top of the route and has vision on the quarterback the whole way. This means the throw to McLaurin is never really on. But Heinicke decides to take the show anyway. Because Diggs had vision the entire time, he never has to worry about McLaurin, because he can see the ball the entire way and just play the ball instead of the man. It’s a poor decision from Heinicke and a relatively simple interception for someone like Diggs, who has excellent ball skills.
Playing off and with vision is what Diggs does best. He’s great at reading the quarterback while anticipating routes by the receiver and attacking the ball in the air. Taking a shot down the field against him when he has those things in his favor is bad quarterback play, not bad wide receiver play. When Washington was able to get Diggs out of those positions where he was off and had vision on the quarterback, he wasn’t quite so effective.
Here in the red zone, Washington aligns McLaurin at the point of the bunch set to the left. Diggs initially aligns off the line of scrimmage, but just before the snap he runs up and plays press against McLaurin. Diggs attempts to jam McLaurin at the line as the receiver looks to release outside. McLaurin manages to get by him and Diggs gets away with grabbing onto McLaurin and pulling him back as McLaurin looks to break outside. To me, it was a clear defensive holding penalty, but it went uncalled.
Now, this isn’t to say the refs are to blame for McLaurin’s lack of production against Diggs, they aren’t. But it was an example of McLaurin getting the better of Diggs and Diggs getting away with a hold. There were plenty of other examples of McLaurin getting the better of Diggs in both games.
This play comes from the game a few weeks ago in Washington. McLaurin aligns in the slot with running back Antonio Gibson outside of him. The pair execute a nice route combination, with McLaurin running a slot fade while Gibson runs a slant underneath it. This creates traffic for Diggs as he attempts to defend McLaurin’s fade route. That allows McLaurin to gain a step as he works down the sideline. McLaurin has the route won and a good throw likely leads to a big gain, but Heinicke undercooks his throw and that allows Diggs to recover. Diggs deserves credit for the recovery and the ball skills to break up the pass even as McLaurin came back for the ball. However, he was only allowed to recover thanks to a poor throw and had Heinicke delivered a better throw out in front of McLaurin, Diggs would have been beaten.
Washington attempted to attack Diggs in a similar situation on Sunday night.
This time Washington is in a bunch set to the right with McLaurin at the point. Diggs lines up on the line of scrimmage in press coverage. McLaurin beats Diggs off the snap with a nice release outside and runs by him down the field. He has a yard or two on Diggs by the time Heinicke throws the ball. However, Heinicke again delivers a poor throw. Instead of hitting McLaurin in stride down the field, he threw out towards the sideline. He forces McLaurin to change his path, taking him from the bottom of the numbers all the way out to the sideline. The ball has just a bit too much on it too and McLaurin can’t quite get to it. There was also a hint of pass interference from Diggs as he fell and possibly tripped up McLaurin while doing so, but I couldn’t see for certain if there was any contact on the replay angles.
On both of those plays, Washington ended up with nothing, but on both occasions McLaurin got by Diggs and was open down the field. Had Heinicke made better throws, McLaurin likely would have had two big gains on those plays.
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