San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers insists there is nothing wrong with him. He has a league-high 14 interceptions; the most he has ever thrown in a season is 15. “I’m not hurt,” Rivers told reporters. “I’ve thrown a handful of picks that I normally don’t throw, and I’ll probably throw some more throughout my career. There won’t always be a reason why.”
That attitude won’t win over critics, but statistical studies back him up.
The number of interceptions thrown by a quarterback one year has been shown to have no predictive value for how many he will throw the next year. The ability to avoid sacks can be projected fairly well with past statistics, even if a quarterback changes teams, but the randomness of interceptions makes forecasting them a fool’s errand.
One example comes from the Giants’ Eli Manning. Last season, Manning had a career-high 25 interceptions, which was more than his 2008 and 2009 seasons combined (24). If he keeps up his pace this season — six interceptions in eight games — he will have less than half his interception total of last season.
In August, Jason Lisk of the Big Lead wrote:
If you want to have a fun bet with your buddy at the bar, bet him that you’ll take Eli Manning, and he can pick three other starting quarterbacks, anyone he wants, who he predicts will have a better interception percentage than Eli in 2011. All three must beat Eli for him to win. It’s not a fair bet, because of the randomness of interceptions, but I suspect he’ll jump at the chance to go with Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and Matt Ryan against your mistake-prone choice.
As it turns out, Brady, who had four interceptions last season, is among the league leaders this season.
Most interceptions this season
Philip Rivers SD 14
Drew Brees NO 11
Tom Brady NE 10
Josh Freeman TB 10
Getting back to Rivers:
1) Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports says the Chargers’ general manager has a big hand in Rivers’s troubles: “Has anyone done more swinging and missing lately than general manager A.J. Smith, and isn’t it time someone held him accountable for his declining batting average?”
2) Rivers spoke with Clark Judge of CBSSports.com, and seems to have the right mental approach.
Q: You’re certainly not the first one to go through something like this. Eli Manning had 25 interceptions last year. Drew Brees had a career-high 22 last season. Have you sought out anyone who’s been through this for advice?
Rivers: I haven’t, but, like you said, you’re never going to play at the same level forever, even though you want to. Again, I just think we have an eight-game season here. We were 2-5 last year, and we were 4-8 two years ago. Who’s to say the second half of this season might not be the best eight games I’ve ever played? I think it’s just that confidence and … why not? Why can’t we get on that kind of roll? Because we have in previous years. We’ve also been 13-3 and gotten knocked out [of the playoffs] in the first round.
