FanPost

How Much Should We Care About Interceptions?

There has been a lot of hue and cry over training camp interceptions, so I decided to take a look at whether interceptions are a good indicator of quarterback success. As a reference, I used interceptions as a percentage of pass attempts for the 2021 season.

See reference here:

https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/nfl-interception-percentage-leaders-2021

I recommend scrolling down and looking at the table because the bar chart at the top is incomplete.

We see from the data that Aaron Rodgers had the best interception to attempt percentage at 0.8, while the worst was a tie between Matthew Stafford and Trevor Lawrence at 2.8. Joe Burrow was tied for third worst with Jimmy Garoppalo at 2.7. Daniel Jones was tenth best at 1.9, sandwiched between Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes. Quarterbacks who are generally considered elite were distributed throughout the range, so there does not seem to be any correlation here.

Interestingly, the two Super Bowl quarterbacks were among the four worst quarterbacks in the league when looking at interception rate. However, Stafford and Burrow were second and third best in touchdown percentage, behind only Aaron Rodgers. It seems that Stafford's and Burrow's high interception rates did not prevent them from throwing a lot of touchdowns. I surmise that most people would list Stafford and Burrow as elite quarterbacks and would not care at all about their interception rates.

On the other hand, Daniel Jones had a next-to-last touchdown rate, behind only Trevor Lawrence. My quick analysis seems to support Daboll's approach of having Jones be more aggressive in the passing game and not worrying as much about the interceptions.



FanPosts are written by community members. This is simply a way for community members to express opinions too long to be contained in a comment.