We are never going to see this level of statistical dominance by a pass defense again.
That’s a pretty bold statement from a pretty conservative blog focused on football history. But 1 passing TD allowed and 18 interceptions in a 7-game stretch?
That will never happen again, and frankly, we may not ever see anything all that close to it happen again. In 2018, the NFL finally exceeded a 2-to-1 ratio of passing touchdowns to interceptions, and the long-term trend is clear: more touchdown passes, fewer interceptions. This season, the 31 pass defenses in the NFL outside of Foxboro have allowed 319 passing touchdowns and forced 155 interceptions, a 2.06-to-1.00 ratio. But the Patriots have forced opposing passers into a 1-to-18 ratio. Include New England’s pass defense, and the NFL’s TD/INT ratio drops to 1.85-to-1.00.
That. Is. Absurd.
Yes, the quarterbacks have been bad. Really bad in some cases (Luke Falk, Josh Rosen), but it also includes games from Ben Roethlisberger, Sam Darnold (coming off a dominant performance), and occasionally competent passers like Case Keenum, Josh Allen, Daniel Jones, and Ryan Fitzpatrick. But it doesn’t matter: if you would have asked me could the best defense in the NFL produce a 1-to-18 ratio against the worst quarterbacks in the NFL for a 7-game span, I would have said no.
This is obviously unsustainable but it is so far to the right tail of comprehensible that you just have to look at the stat line in awe. And know that something like this will never happen again. New England’s defense has posted a passer rating of 35.6; if you throw an incomplete pass on every plat, that’s a 39.6 passer rating! New England is allowing less than 1.0 ANY/A over 7 games! If a running back had 1,000 yards on his first 100 carries of the season, that would be unsustainable, too, but it wouldn’t make it any less remarkable. It might make it more remarkable, because this transcends any notion of what we would think possible.
The graph below shows the TD% (on the X-Axis) and INT% (on the Y-Axis) for each pass defense this year. To make “up and to the right” the good part of the graph, I have plotted the TD% in reverse order. As you can see, the Patriots pass defense stands alone.
How Rare Is It To Allow Just 1 Passing TD Over 7 Games?
It hadn’t been done since the 2005 Bears, who pulled that off late in the season. Before them, the 2002 Bucs were the last team to do it, and the ’01 Jets, ’01 Bears, and ’00 Titans (including playoffs) are the only other teams since 2000.
How Rare Is It To Intercept 18 Passes In 7 Games?
It hadn’t been done in 10 years: the 2009 Bills, who allowed just 3 passing TDs and forced 18 interceptions, were the last team to pull off this trick. And it’s only been done a handful of times since 2000.
How Rare Is It To Have a -17 TD/INT differential?
In the decade of the 2010s, the best differential prior to the 2019 Patriots belonged to the 2011-2012 Bears, who allowed just 6 TDs and forced 17 INTs over one 7-game stretch.
The last team to be at -17 or better was the 2002-2003 Bucs, who allowed just 2 passing touchdowns and forced 20 interceptions over a 7-game stretch that spanned the Super Bowl run. Before them, the 1989-1990 49ers (also spanning a Super Bowl) were the previous team, with a 1 TD/18 INT ratio matching the current Patriots. Prior to that team, the ’84 Broncos were the last team to pull this off (4/22), and the defense-happy decade of the ’70s only had two teams do this: the ’69-’70 Chiefs (5/23) and ’70-’71 Cowboys (6/23), with both of those spanning the postseason as well.
That, of course, was an entirely different era. What New England is doing now is something we would have assumed impossible in the modern era. When the Legion of Boom dominated in 2013, the NFL’s TD/INT ratio was down at 1.60 to 1; yes, even that was a different era. And the best those Seahawks ever did was -10, in the final 7-game stretch of the season ending in the Super Bowl (6 TDs, 16 INTs). To be at 1/18 in this era? I would have assumed that to be impossible.