The Pittsburgh Steelers had their first single-season interception leader since Mel Blount in 1975 last year when S Minkah Fitzpatrick recorded a career-high six. He was tied with multiple other players at that number, which marked a particularly low total to lead for an entire season.
No better statistic illustrates that point than the fact that Baltimore Ravens S Geno Stone just intercepted his sixth pass of the season yesterday. In the ninth game of the year. He still has another eight games to play, to better the number Fitzpatrick recorded in 15 games.
And Stone, you might recall, isn’t even supposed to be a starter for the Ravens, though he has been due to injury. Marcus Williams, a recent big free agent acquisition, and 2022 first-round pick Kyle Hamilton are technically Baltimore’s starting safety pairing, but it’s safe to assume they will keep finding work for him when Williams returns.
A 2020 seventh-round pick, Stone saw seven starts in 2022 due to injury, but has never been the intended starter before—and he still isn’t, or at least he hasn’t been as of yet. He started again yesterday with Williams missing his third consecutive game and sixth of the year, but it’s hard to say what their plans are when all three safeties are healthy. When Williams returned the first time, it was Stone who was the odd man out, at least in a lesser role.
But how do you keep an interception machine off the field? Yes, you have an expensive veteran and a top draft pick, but Stone is the one making the plays. He has recorded an interception now in four consecutive games.
Surprisingly, that isn’t actually exceedingly rare, and happens a little less often than twice per season, on average. Two players did it last year, for example, and there are other years with more, but there have been stretches of multiple seasons without it happening even once. In total, there have been 100 single-season stretches of games in which a player has recorded at least one interception since 1970. Still impressive, even if far from a record.
If he can get it up to five, Stone will be one of only 21 players to have done it in the modern era. It’s been done four times in just the past three seasons alone, but it’s still five times as infrequent an occurrence. And there are only seven players to have done it in six consecutive games, including Blount in 1975.
As for Fitzpatrick, well, he’s still looking for his first “splash play” of the 2023 season, let alone his first interception. He did have one pass that he could have picked off. He also had a sack—which would have been the first of his career—negated by a questionable roughing the passer penalty.
Currently dealing with a hamstring injury that kept him out of last Thursday’s game, it is unclear what his health status is for the coming week. But while he hasn’t been getting his hands on many balls, the defense does have eight interceptions on the season, seventh-most in the least.
