Quandre Diggs: Detroit Lions wanting to 'control voices' prompted trade

Dave Birkett | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Quandre Diggs a shining example as he visits his Texas high school Quandre Diggs returns to Angleton High School in Texas, Aug. 14, 2019.

There wasn’t one incident that precipitated his trade to the Seattle Seahawks, but former Detroit Lions safety Quandre Diggs said his strong personality is ultimately what led the Lions to ship him out of town.

“I think it was more of just a control thing,” he told the Free Press in a phone interview Thursday to promote the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. “Them wanting to control the locker room. Control the locker room, control voices in the locker room.”

The Lions traded Diggs and a 2021 seventh-round pick to the Seahawks for a 2020 fifth-rounder a week before the NFL’s trade deadline last month.

The move came as a “shock” to Diggs and many others.

A team captain who is just 26 years old, Diggs signed a three-year contract extension with the Lions in September 2018 and was coming off a season in which he was voted an alternate to the Pro Bowl.

Diggs said Thursday he holds “no ill will” toward the franchise for the trade, and he expressed love for his former teammates, the city, Lions owner Martha Ford and the team brass that brought him to Detroit, former general manager Martin Mayhew, president Tom Lewand and coach Jim Caldwell.

Asked about his relationship with current Lions coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn, Diggs said: “It is what it is.”

“Like I say, I don’t have no ill will towards anybody, but at the end of the day, I’m at a new organization that respects the players, they respect your personality and the people that you are,” he said. “I’m just happy about my situation. Those guys, they do what they do, (what) they feel like what’s best for the organization. I don’t fault them, but at the end of the day, I’m good where I’m at.”

Diggs told Seattle reporters last month that he was “blindsided” by the trade, which he learned of in a phone call from his agent.

On Thursday, he said part of his shock was due to his status as a team captain.

“It’s different when you’re a team captain, somebody that’s played a lot of games, a lot of games for that organization, somebody that put his body on the line each and every week,” Diggs said. “Go out there and play with a hamstring that I had already injured, then go back out there, re-injure it just trying to get a division win. It was shocking to me. I wouldn’t say totally unexpected because things were not great there. But it was definitely a head-scratcher for me at that time, at that moment, with the Lions in the playoff race getting rid of their defensive leader.”

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Asked what wasn’t going great, Diggs said there were “just disagreements on how things should be done.”

“Just me being the person I am,” he said. “I’m a vocal guy, so when you’re vocal and when you’re competitive, I’m a competitive guy. I’m competitive as (expletive). I hate losing. I go and I put my body on the line every week doing hella treatment, doing all these other things and at the end of the day it didn’t work out. At the end of the day, I have no ill will towards the Lions, I have no ill will towards anybody, I’m just me, man, and I guess when you yourself, sometimes you get singled out. So, I kind of think that’s what it is.”

Diggs declined to say whom he voiced his displeasure or what he was displeased with.

Patricia said after the trade that dealing Diggs was a "very difficult decision" that the organization thought would "help the team get better in the long run." The Lions hoped to turn the draft capital acquired in the Diggs trade into another piece to help them this year.

At the time of the deal, the Lions had the NFL’s 31st-ranked defense and Diggs was among the league leaders in missed tackles. He ranked as the No. 61 safety in the NFL at the time of the trade, according to Pro Football Focus, behind Lions teammates Tracy Walker, Tavon Wilson and Will Harris.

“I don’t want to get into that in the middle of the season,” Diggs said. “I don’t want controversy here, controversy there. At the end of the day, it’ll come out, man. Everything else tends to come out there, so I’m sure it’ll come out. I hear the rumblings about, ‘Oh, he wasn’t playing well,’ blah, blah, blah.

"Well … I also wasn’t put in the position that I was put in last year when I was making plays. It’ll all come out in the end. Like I say, played through injuries, trying to change my personality to fit more in with the program and it changed me as a player, it changed me as a person but at the end of the day I’m just happy to be free and I can be myself and go out and play football or play winning football.”

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Diggs left the Week 4 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs with a hamstring injury and missed the next game two weeks later against the Green Bay Packers.

He returned for a Week 7 game against the Minnesota Vikings, his final game as a Lion, but aggravated his injury in the first half.

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll told reporters last week that Diggs’ injury was worse than what the Seahawks believed when they acquired him.

Diggs had blood drained from his hamstring in Seattle but passed his trade physical, and a Lions source said previously the team disclosed the extent of the injury to the Seahawks.

“Me being a defensive leader, missing one division game, I didn’t want to miss two, knowing that I wasn’t 100% healthy, but my teammates counting on me to go out there and play, be that spark plug and do those type of things,” Diggs said of his decision to play against the Vikings. “That’s just the type of person, individual I am. But I guess in everybody’s eyes it’s not the same.”

Diggs practiced on a limited basis Thursday and could make his Seahawks debut Monday night against the San Francisco 49ers.

“I’m in a blessed situation,” he said. “I get to play football, get to make a lot of money playing the game that I love and I’m healthy, so that’s all that matters to me. The shock has kind of wore off, it’s time to get to work and I’m excited about every game that’s here."

Call me

A gamer since he was young, Diggs spoke Thursday as he was on his way home to play Call of Duty. He said he typically plays with friends from back home in Texas, or others in the league, and that the popularity of video games goes with young athletes having extra time on their hands.

“I think for me personally, I think it’s as a stress reliever,” he said. “The business that we play in, the business that we’re in is very stressful. It’s just something to get your mind off the fricking constant preparation of playing football games and having to be right, having to be right all the time. You can just kind of release, and just go out and compete with your friends that you’ve grown up with and just have fun doing that. So I think that’s the dope part about it.”

Diggs said he and Seahawks practice squad safety Adrian Colbert have played online games against each other for years, dating to when they were in college. And he said he and Lions cornerback Darius Slay have had heated Call of Duty battles.

Asked how he spent trade deadline day last month, Slay said he "got a little bit better in Call of Duty."

“Right now he might be better,” Diggs said. “I haven’t played as much because with the trade I’ve been (getting) situated. But heck, I’m about to go get on right now. It don’t take me long to get really good at the game, so I’m straight. I’ll be beating him real bad (soon).”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.Read more on the Detroit Lions and sign up for our Lions newsletter.s