Dallas City News

This is the time of year when an abundance of player and team rankings come out. In mid-July, ESPN listed the top 10 cornerbacks in the NFL, and neither Trevon Diggs nor DaRon Bland of the Dallas Cowboys were on it. This was particularly surprising since the latter just earned first-team All-Pro honors and set a single-season record with five interceptions returned for touchdowns.

Earlier this week, Diggs was surrounded by reporters after practice, and they asked him how he felt about being omitted from the list. Per the former second-round pick, he wasn’t phased in the slightest.

“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.”

When checking the facts, Diggs has every right to feel that way. Back in 2021, Diggs snagged 11 interceptions (returned two for touchdowns), which has been the most in the NFL since 1981. A year later, he didn’t come close to that many with just three, but he held Ja’Marr Chase of the Cincinnati Bengals to two receptions for 14 yards, and also made a critical third-down tackle to force a punt which led to a Cowboys victory. Diggs also went up against Justin Jefferson of the Minnesota Vikings that season, and he held him to only two receptions for 19 yards.

Diggs had his 2023 campaign cut short with an ACL tear after two games. However, he did log an interception, and his hit on former New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley in Week 1 popped the ball in the air and led to one of Bland return scores. Even when Diggs isn’t taking the ball away, he does a great job of causing incompletions as he’s racked up 52 pass breakups during his career.

All Bland has done his he entered the league is produce. He was the Cowboys CB3 to start out as a rookie and mostly played in the slot (434 snaps), but he led the Cowboys with five interceptions. Once Diggs went down last year, Bland played mostly as an outside cornerback (783 snaps), and that resulted in a league-leading nine interceptions.

There is more to playing cornerback than interceptions. That much is known. However, when you take the ball away at the rate that Diggs and Bland do which gives the Cowboys so many extra possessions on offense, its easy to see why anyone would scoff at them not being mentioned as top 10 players at their position. All of this is subjective, of course, but some things are just no-brainers, and Diggs and Bland have earned the respect to be mentioned with the top guys at their position.