Russell Wilson, Marcus Mariota, and Patrick Mahomes have yet to throw an interception this season. Wilson has now started five games, with Mariota and Mahomes set to start their fifth games of the season on Sunday. Of the three, Mariota seems the least likely to put together any sort of long streak here. While the Titans quarterback is famous for his ability to take a sack at the first sign of trouble, he entered the 2019 season with a career 2.6% interception rate. More importantly (and related to that fact), most interceptions are thrown when trailing, and Mariota plays on the worst of these three teams. On the other hand, he has now gone 6 straight games without an interception and 169 passes without an interception, while taking 21 sacks during that period. Presumably, Mariota will at some point soon throw an interception while in catch-up mode, but you never know: against the Jaguars in week 4, Tennessee took over down 13 points with 3:23 remaining, and were so aggressive that they… got to the Jaguars 37-yard line with 2 seconds remainin.

Since the start of the 2015 season, 62% of all interceptions have come when a team was behind on the scoreboard, 14% in tie games, and the remaining 24% by the team in the lead. The easiest way to avoid throwing interceptions is to take a sack; the second-easiest way is to play with the lead. You might have noticed that since the Saints have become good again, Drew Brees has stopped throwing interceptions.

Wilson, of course, is therefore in a very good position. He takes a lot of sacks and often plays with the lead, which should help to minimize his chances of throwing an interception. He’s also one of the most accurate passers in the NFL, which helps quite a lot, too. Wilson is completing 73.1% of his passes so far in 2019, and he has a career interception rate under 2.0%. Can he go the next 11 games without throwing an interception? It’s been done before, but only once: Tom Brady, during the last 11 games of the 2010 season, is the only quarterback to go 11 straight games without throwing an interception (minimum 10 pass attempts in each game). The next time he took the field, he threw an interception on the first drive of the Patriots playoff game against the Jets, which New England lost. If Brady wasn’t so clutch, that would have looked like he choked in a playoff game.

Bart Starr once went the equivalent of an NFL season — 14 games, from week 4, 1964 through week 3, 1965 — without throwing an interception. Starr left a pair of games early due to injury during that streak, however, finishing with 5 and 9 attempts in those games.

Mahomes doesn’t take many sacks or throw many interceptions; when combined with his absurd 9.0 yards per attempt average, it’s easy to see why he’s currently the best passer in the NFL. The Chiefs are one of the best teams in the NFL, and if Mahomes becomes a little more conservative, he could put together a long streak without throwing an interception.

For awhile, Damon Huard held the record for lowest interception rate in a season. In 2006, he threw just one interception in 8 starts, producing an interception rate of just 0.4%. Then last year, Aaron Rodgers bested him, throwing only 2 interceptions and producing a 0.3% interception rate. In 2016, Brian Hoyer set the record for most pass attempts in a season without an interception, with an even 200.

So will a quarterback ever start a full slate of games and finish a season without throwing an interception? If we assume (incorrectly) that all passes are independent, if a quarterback has a true interception rate of 1.5% and throws 550 passes, he would go a full season season without throwing an interception just once every 4,074 seasons. Even if we lower his true interception rate to 1.0%, that still leaves only a 1-in-252 chance of going a season without throwing an interception (although given 32 teams and enough seasons, that 0-INT season will happen pretty soon). I don’t think any quarterback has a true interception rate that low, but I also know that all passes are not independent.

Given a conservative enough quarterback who plays in enough favorable situations, and it becomes at least feasible. A quarterback will need some breaks and bounces to go their way, but as interception rates keep declining, the best quarterbacks are throwing interceptions at rates that come closer to one percent. Given enough quarterbacks and enough favorable situations, a quarterback will eventually get pretty close. Then the big question is whether that will help him or hurt him: if a quarterback makes it to 12 games without an interception, does that make it more likely he won’t throw one in his final four games?

So what do you think? What year would you set as the over/under for the first year where a quarterback plays 16 games and doesn’t throw an interception? 2025?