Joseph Sees Missed Opportunities in NFL Milestone

In setting the standard for passes defensed, Titans cornerback estimates he missed out on roughly three dozen interceptions

NASHVILLE – Free agent cornerback Johnathan Joseph comes to the Tennessee Titans on the verge of an NFL milestone.

Over the course of 14 seasons, he has been credited with 194 passes defensed. Six more and he will become the first player to record 200 – or at least the first since the league’s official numbers gurus began to chart that particular statistic, which was in 2000.

That is an average of nearly one for each of the 200 games he has played for the Cincinnati Bengals and Houston Texans. It suggests a measure of reliability and consistency that undoubtedly figured into the Titans’ decision to sign him to a one-year deal.

However, it also includes a number of missed opportunities. A “pass defensed” is any instance in which the player on defense causes an incompletion by knocking the ball away or by tackling the intended receiver at the same time the ball arrives.

When Joseph thinks about all of the passes he has broken up, he can’t help but remember all of the ones that could have been interceptions.

“Man, I probably dropped about 35-40,” he said this week. “I dropped 10 my rookie year. I had like 20-something pass breakups, but 10 of those were dropped interceptions. Like two hands on the ball, I dropped [it]. – It’s not just one of those ones you think you can have, like two hands on the ball. At least 30 to 35 [missed] interceptions, without a doubt.”

It should be noted that Joseph has made 31 interceptions, which count as passes defended, during his career. That puts him among the top 200 all-time. Among all active players in 2019, only three had more. And he recorded at least one in every season but one since his rookie year.

So, it’s not as if he has been a failure in that regard.

Plus, there have been a lot of times when a breakup was probably the best he could do.

“Playing in a heavy man-to-man scheme throughout my whole career, it’s like the hardest thing is in man-to-man is to play the man and turn around and find the ball,” Joseph said. “You could look at it a lot of times like that.

“That’s part of football, just being a ball disrupter in general. That’s what I’ve been able to do.”

He’s managed to do it more times than anyone else since they began to count. Hall of Famer Champ Bailey is second with 187. Another Hall of Famer, Charles Woodson (his career began in 1998) is fifth with 168.

“The record is just part of the thing that came with my career throughout, me just being persistent,” Joseph said. “It’s not something that I set out just to chase. Obviously, you never want your guy to catch the ball. … I think playing the right disciplined football, making guys earn each and every yard, doing all those things helped me throughout my career just to get my hands on more and more balls.”

It just didn’t help him hold on to the ball as much as he would have liked.