Interceptions 2024

Every year I write this article and every year I start out by walking you through the history of it. Last year I went on a very deep dive on what started me down the road of tracking these interception stats and how things changed over those 10+ years. There's no need to go through all of that again, right?

Maybe I'll just link to that post here so you can read the long history if you want. And if you just want a brief summary, here we go. Bullet points, Robert. Bullet points.

• In 2012, frustrated with Illini defenses that just could not produce interceptions, I decided to see where we stood compared to other FBS programs. That research told me that out of 120 FBS programs at the time (I couldn't include teams that moved up to FBS in, say, 2006 because they would not have 10 years of data), we were 120th in interceptions over the previous ten seasons. 120th out of 120. Dead last.
• We stayed dead last until September 5, 2015 when we passed Eastern Michigan to move to 119th out of 120.
• In 2017, someone suggested that I use a 10-year running total instead of just tracking interceptions all the way back to 2003. So beginning in July of 2018, I started looking at the previous ten seasons. That year I looked at 2008 through 2017. This year will be 2014 through 2023.
• I have not added any teams beyond the original 120 teams. There's no UTSA or Georgia Southern tracked here. At some point – once, like, Old Dominion has ten years of FBS interception data – maybe I'll go back and add them to the spreadsheet. But today is not that day.

I had been looking forward to this year for one reason: the worst year of data on my chart was 2013. We had three interceptions in 2013. It killed our average for the last decade. But the ten year window for this 2024 post is 2014~2023, so... bye bye, 3. Maybe I'll be able to replace it with a 15 and then we'll rocket up the chart!

I replaced it with a 7. After 24 (yes, 24) interceptions in 2022, we had seven last season. That meant that we tied for 109th nationally. Yes, we knew that losing Devon Witherspoon, Sydney Brown, and Quan Martin would significantly lower the number (as would missing Matt Bailey for the entire year because Bailey, as a backup, had three picks in 2022), but I didn't expect it to drop to 7. The "3" finally falls off the list only to be replaced by a "7."

But that's still an improvement. And it still moved us up on the 10-year average. I'm going to try to embed the entire chart this year (perhaps on your phone you'll need to flip to landscape?), so here goes. Interception leaders from the 2014 season through the 2023 season (with the individual totals for each year):