A closer look at this year's interception leaders

This year's interception leaderboard has several big names, some surprising and some not. I'll take a closer look.

Brett Favre (18 INT, 5 FumL). The only thing surprising here is that the all-time interception leader who is well known (and at times celebrated) for forcing interceptions has managed the highest interception rate of his storied career. Last year he had his lowest interception rate ever at 1.3 per 100 passes, which contributed to his career high passer rating, a Pro Bowl berth, and a belief in magical fountains of youth. This year, he has his highest interception rate ever at 5.1 per 100, which got his coach fired and will probably result in his third and hopefully final retirement.

Eli Manning (17 INT, 5 FumL). Eli is also having the worst interception rate since his rookie season, at 4.2 per 100. Announcers keep pardoning it by saying a lot of them were on tipped passes that weren't his fault. It may be partially true that he's been a little unlucky, as we wouldn't normally expect a QB in the prime of his career to suddenly spike above his career INT rate. But his career INT rate is terrible, so let's not forgive him completely. You don't blame it all on tipped balls when the guy's career rate is the same as Brett Favre and the only active QBs worse than him are Boller, Delhomme, Cutler, Fitzpatrick, Young, Kitna, ASmith, Grossman, and Anderson.

Drew Brees (16 INT, 1 FumL). I was surprised when I looked closer at his numbers. I would have assumed that a QB as accurate as Brees (65.3% career completion percentage is 2nd among active QBs) would have a very low interception rate, but his career 2.7% rate is middling at best. Like Favre and Eli, he's prone to interceptions and having a relatively bad year, but his career rate isn't quite as high as those two and his spike this year isn't quite as bad as theirs. The only reason he's close to them in number of interceptions is that he's thrown a lot more passes.

Donovan McNabb (15 INT, 1 FumL). Remember when every game they'd mention how McNabb was the all-time leader in interception rate? Well, they don't have to say that any more; 3/4 of a season in Washington has dropped him all the way to fourth. It's really amazing -- his rookie year, he was at 3.2 INT per 100 passes, and then he was between 1.5 and 2.5 every year since then...until his 3.4% rate this year. Even with Charles Johnson and Torrance Small, even with James Thrash and Todd Pinkston, even as a raw second-year player, he was never even close to as bad as he is this season. Maybe Andy Reid has a magical system -- Vick is a 2.7% career guy at 0.7% this year. Maybe the Eagles' receivers improving over the last couple years covered for McNabb deteriorating with age, and now being dropped back into a bad situation has exposed him. I don't know, but I find it train-wreck fascinating to watch.

Peyton Manning (15 INT, 1 FumL). Peyton is taking a lot of crap right now because he's thrown a million interceptions in the last three weeks and his team is losing. But his interception rate isn't higher than usual -- at 2.8%, it's right at his career numbers (which, like Brees, are surprisingly mediocre). What is extremely high is his attempts per game -- at 44.5, it's the highest in the league by a sizable margin, and the highest of his career by an even more sizable margin. The three- and four-interception games definitely hurt the team, but the blame should be at least partly on the coaches calling 50 passes a game and/or on the running game (or lack thereof) that forces them to do so.