On to the interceptions. The Saints had the 3rd highest rate of interceptions on defense this past season, nearly 1.5% above the league average. Like the rate of fumble recovery, the research says that this is unsustainable. A defenses interception rate doesn’t just lack year to year correlation, inside a season there isn’t a significant correlation between past int rates and futures ones. This led Brian Burke of AdvancedNFLStats.com to say,
“Interceptions are very random, and they are ‘thrown’ by an offense much more than they are ‘taken’ by a defense.”
Ignore the talk of the Saints playmaking defense. They don’t possess any repeatable skill for generating turnovers at a rate above league average. They’ve just been on the lucky side of the year to year variations. What the Saints D really is, is a unit that couldn’t hold opponents under 21 points a game (20th in the league) despite some of the best turnover luck of the year
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