FanPost

The pick-six affliction

Curious for general thoughts here. I'm not a particularly astute X's and O's guy, but I'm wondering if there's anything specific to a quarterback's decisionmaking that makes a team more prone to giving up the pick-six. Obviously at this point it's a huge problem for us: one vs Auburn, one vs Fla, a near-miss vs South Carolina  returned to about the 5, and two vs UGA.

I can't recall anyone I've watched in college having this problem, but off the top of my head I recall that in the NFL it was a problem for Drew Bledsoe, at least later in his career, and I *think* it became a problem for Kurt Warner in his Giants and early Arizona years.

I acknowledge 10 players on the field other than the QB are also accountable on an INT return, but I wonder whether the odds of a pick-six are increased with a QB's taking a little more risk in his throws, being a little more aggressive, perhaps trying to force it into a spot which has a higher likelihood of a defender there moving towards the ball rather than backpedaling. I have no idea and I could be spouting pure garbage here, but when it's been an acknowledged problem coming into the game and then we toss up two more, it just begs the question of whether there's an underlying fundamental issue which gives rise to so many of these?