The Buffalo Bills Have Picked Off Tom Brady and Mike Vick Four Times Each, and Eli Manning is Up Next

How much of that is “luck” in the sense that it is non-repeatable, and how much of it is skill that will continue for the Bills as the season goes on?

I looked at every other team that had at least 10 defensive interceptions in the first five games of a season since 1990. Over the remaining 11 games, these teams averaged 13.3 interceptions. The league average over this period would expect 11.7 interceptions over a random 11 game stretch, so these teams did continue to get interceptions at a slightly above average rate, though not at the same pace as they started.

Buffalo, though, has two unique issues to go with their impressive interception totals. First is sacks, where they only have 5, ranking them near the bottom of this list (the average was 11.1 sacks for our high interception teams). There actually is not a strong relationship between sacks in the first 5 games and future interceptions, except at the extreme end–the 3 teams with more than 15 sacks and more than 10 interceptions went on to average 17.7 interceptions, and two of them won a Super Bowl. Besides that, though, the low sack teams weren’t appreciably different from the rest of the group.

The second issue is the rate at which they are giving up yards and completions, something that also applies to the other team with double digit interceptions, the Green Bay Packers. Both teams are allowing a higher yards per attempt figure than all but one team on that list (1990 New England).

The bottom 10 teams in yards per attempt allowed among our high interceptors went on to average 11.4 interceptions for the rest of the year, basically average. This may represent teams with a higher amount of luck initially, as the coverage wasn’t always tight, and teams were able to get completions and yards when passes weren’t intercepted.

If I were to guess, based on the history of the last few years in Buffalo with volatile interception numbers, the overall tendency to regress, and the relatively unimpressive sack and yards per attempt totals, the Bills shouldn’t be expected to get interceptions at any more than the league average rate for the rest of the year.

[photo via Getty]