How all these Stefon Diggs trade rumors started flying around

These days, all it takes is one little thing on social media that may have nothing to do with an athlete’s team, and BOOM: Everyone reads the tea leaves with a player and thinks they’re demanding a trade.

It feels like that’s what happened with Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs.

One minute, he was catching all seven of his targets from Kirk Cousins and turned them into 108 yards in Sunday’s loss to the Chicago Bears. The next — it was more like days later — the speculation about a Diggs trade was roaring.

Let’s look back at how this whole thing started and where we are now.

It started with the emoji tweet

On Monday, Diggs tweeted this:

That’s it. An emoji tweet. Maybe he wasn’t happy about the Vikes’ loss? A commentary on Adam Thielen’s frustrated comments on Sunday that led to Cousins apologizing to the receiver? Who knows?

There was also this report from The Athletic that same day about the action on the Vikings’ sideline:

 The fourth quarter had started, the Vikings still hadn’t scored, and now Kirk Cousins was throwing a checkdown on third and a mile. On the sideline, Diggs started yelling. Offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski was only a few feet away, but it wasn’t clear whether Diggs was directing his frustration at him or simply the general struggles of the day. He eventually stood alone on the sideline.

It continued with social media speculation

Attention turned to who he was following on Instagram:

Then everyone remembered something extremely important

In 2018, Diggs signed a five-year extension worth $72 million that included $40 million in guarantees. Trading him would result in a lot of dead money on the Vikings’ cap down the road.

On Wednesday, Diggs missed practice for non-injury reasons

Turn up the heat on those rumors again!

Some reports put out the trade rumor fires

From NBC Sports Boston:

“A league source with knowledge of the situation said Wednesday the Vikings have no plans to trade Diggs.”

So here we are. Will he practice Thursday and put all of this completely to rest? Stay tuned.