Saw a story this week that Jameis Winston wants to stay in New Orleans, content to serve as a backup to Derek Carr. Evidently he's really happy with the organization and the community, or else he's decided the ship has sailed on any NFL team viewing him a starting quarterback. Maybe both.
Lots of teams looking for starting quarterbacks, but I don't think any of them will be particularly interested in handing Winston the keys to the offense. While he had some success at the start of his career, the negatives of his game seem a little too substantial to overcome.
Since Winston entered the league in 2015, there's one stat where he's been more productive than any other quarterback. You guessed it: interceptions. In the last nine seasons, his 99 interceptions is tops in the NFL. That's despite being a backup quarterback since the 2019 season -- he's started only 10 games the last four years. All the other quarterbacks in the top 5 in interceptions over that timeframe started at least 50 percent more games than he did.
No. 2 in terms of interceptions since 2015, ironically enough, is New Orleans' starter Derek Carr. But Carr hasn't been overly interception prone. His 95 interceptions have come in 143 starts, which works out to around 10-11 interception per season -- not too bad.
Passing totals since 2015, sorted by interceptions, are shown below. Search tools at pro-football-reference.com were used in compiling this table.
TOTAL PASSING STATS SINCE 2015 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Player | Starts | Yards | TD | INT |
Jameis Winston | 80 | 22104 | 141 | 99 |
Derek Carr | 143 | 35830 | 221 | 95 |
Matthew Stafford | 129 | 34333 | 226 | 95 |
Matt Ryan | 124 | 34626 | 200 | 92 |
Kirk Cousins | 136 | 36441 | 252 | 91 |
Philip Rivers | 96 | 26785 | 169 | 87 |
Jared Goff | 117 | 30429 | 185 | 82 |
Ben Roethlisberger | 89 | 25031 | 167 | 80 |
Russell Wilson | 140 | 33703 | 262 | 80 |
Josh Allen | 93 | 22703 | 167 | 78 |
Andy Dalton | 99 | 23753 | 147 | 78 |
Baker Mayfield | 86 | 20332 | 130 | 74 |
Dak Prescott | 114 | 29459 | 202 | 74 |
Ryan Tannehill | 103 | 23629 | 153 | 73 |
Cam Newton | 82 | 17956 | 112 | 69 |
Tom Brady | 126 | 35956 | 257 | 69 |
Ryan Fitzpatrick | 58 | 15717 | 100 | 68 |
Carson Wentz | 93 | 22292 | 153 | 67 |
Joe Flacco | 73 | 18405 | 97 | 65 |
Patrick Mahomes | 96 | 28424 | 219 | 63 |
Eli Manning | 67 | 17268 | 107 | 59 |
Blake Bortles | 60 | 14741 | 92 | 58 |
Sam Darnold | 56 | 12064 | 63 | 56 |
Marcus Mariota | 74 | 15820 | 93 | 55 |
Jimmy Garoppolo | 63 | 15312 | 93 | 51 |
Drew Brees | 85 | 24325 | 175 | 49 |
Mitchell Trubisky | 57 | 12536 | 72 | 48 |
Aaron Rodgers | 121 | 30477 | 249 | 48 |
Kyler Murray | 65 | 15647 | 94 | 46 |
Deshaun Watson | 65 | 16756 | 118 | 45 |
Lamar Jackson | 77 | 15887 | 125 | 45 |
Case Keenum | 56 | 12980 | 68 | 43 |
Justin Herbert | 62 | 17223 | 114 | 42 |
Andrew Luck | 38 | 10714 | 85 | 40 |
Daniel Jones | 59 | 12512 | 62 | 40 |
Trevor Lawrence | 50 | 11770 | 58 | 39 |
Tua Tagovailoa | 51 | 12639 | 81 | 37 |
Joe Burrow | 52 | 14083 | 97 | 37 |
Mac Jones | 42 | 8918 | 46 | 36 |
Teddy Bridgewater | 53 | 12201 | 61 | 35 |
Jalen Hurts | 51 | 11764 | 67 | 34 |
Alex Smith | 62 | 14792 | 77 | 33 |
Trevor Siemian | 33 | 7751 | 44 | 32 |
Carson Palmer | 38 | 10882 | 70 | 32 |
Nick Mullens | 20 | 6391 | 34 | 31 |
Brock Osweiler | 30 | 7259 | 36 | 31 |
Jay Cutler | 34 | 7384 | 44 | 30 |
Nick Foles | 34 | 7474 | 36 | 30 |
Justin Fields | 38 | 6674 | 40 | 30 |
--Andy Richardson