_“Weird team, Demario.”_
Joe has emerged with a couple of interns from the JoeBucsFan.com world headquarters research lab, two doors down from Ira Kaufman’s office and snacks locker.
There, Joe found that the Bucs have 16 interceptions through the season’s first nine games and are on pace for 30 picks this season. The last team to notch 30 or more interceptions was the 2011 Packers, a 15 win-team.
But wait, there’s more.
Since the start of the 2010 campaign, when the Bears led the NFL with 21 interceptions, of the 14 teams that led the league in interceptions during a season with 21 or more, only one finished with a losing record. That was the ’23 Bears, a Chicago club mired in a quarterback problem with bust Justin Fields in his third season. Every other team was a winner and the group averaged a whopping 11.5 wins in those seasons.
And here the Bucs sit at 3-6.
It’s an unbelieveable record for a team that has picked off so many balls. Last night was the pièce de résistance when the Bucs grabbed four passes thrown by rising stud Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and lost.
Like those ’23 Bears, the current Bucs have had extended quarterbacking issues. Capitalizing on turnovers has been a struggle.
Of course, there’s no guarantee the Bucs can or will continue their torrid pace of delivering interceptions. It’s unlikely, as Joe noted. No team has hit the current Bucs full-season pace since 2011. The Bears led the NFL last year with 23 picks. And the Vikings led with 25 in 2024.