The Jets had the weird deal last year where their defense was really good, yet they didn’t generate takeaways. Only three teams allowed fewer yards than New York, and only three allowed fewer points, yet only three defenses finished with fewer takeaways. Just 12 interceptions and 4 fumble recoveries, which hardly seems possible.
My gut feeling is to think this just a matter of chance – that the Jets will be just fine in those categories in the upcoming season. But it’s always nice to poke around with the numbers to see what’s happened in similar situations in the past.
For this one, I see 13 other defenses in the 32-team era that have ranked in the top-5 in scoring defense, yet have finished with fewer than 20 takeaways. We can take those defenses and look at what they did in their next seasons. That should provide some idea of whether takeaways are a sticky stat.
As shown in the chart below, 11 of those defenses finished with more takeaways the next year. Three of them finished with at least 10 more takeaways. As a group, they had 77 more interceptions and fumbles, or an average of 6 per team. So I wouldn’t sorry much about the Jets again finishing in the bottom 10 in takeaways. With Sauce Gardner (pictured), Quinnen Williams and C.J. Mosley, they’ve got plenty of talent on that side of the ball. And the defense might benefit from playing with more leads this year (if Aaron Rodgers has anything left in the tank).
The chart below is a little unconventional. Apologies for that. What you’re seeing are takeaways for defenses (interceptions, fumbles and the total of the two). The “Imp?” column shows how many more takeaways the defense had than the previous season.
The last two columns show average number of points allowed (followed by its rank in that category). There tended to be plenty of decline there. All 13 defenses, after all, came in having ranked in the top 5 in scoring defense. Only two were able to stay in the top 5, and over half ranked 14th or lower.
If form holds, the Jets will be moving well up in takeaways but allowing more points.
| GOOD DEFENSES WITH FEW TAKEAWAYS (the next year) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Team | Int | Fum | Tot | Imp? | Pts | Rk |
| 2004 | Buffalo | 24 | 15 | 39 | 21 | 17.8 | 8 |
| 2012 | Pittsburgh | 10 | 10 | 20 | 5 | 19.6 | 6 |
| 2014 | New Orleans | 12 | 5 | 17 | -2 | 26.5 | 28 |
| 2015 | Kansas City | 22 | 7 | 29 | 15 | 17.9 | 3 |
| 2017 | Seattle | 14 | 11 | 25 | 6 | 20.8 | 14 |
| 2018 | New England | 18 | 10 | 28 | 10 | 20.3 | 7 |
| 2018 | Minnesota | 12 | 8 | 20 | 1 | 21.3 | 9 |
| 2019 | Baltimore | 13 | 12 | 25 | 8 | 17.6 | 3 |
| 2019 | Tennessee | 14 | 9 | 23 | 6 | 20.7 | 12 |
| 2019 | Jacksonville | 10 | 9 | 19 | 2 | 24.8 | 21 |
| 2020 | Chicago | 10 | 8 | 18 | -1 | 23.1 | 14 |
| 2021 | LA Chargers | 11 | 10 | 21 | 2 | 21.9 | 15 |
| 2022 | Denver | 15 | 8 | 23 | 4 | 21.1 | 14 |
| 2023 | NY Jets | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
—Ian Allan