Minkah Fitzpatrick finally snapped the New York Jets’ NFL-record interception drought at 20 straight games, ending a stretch that had become a defining mark of defensive failure.
In the second quarter of Sunday’s game in Chicago, Fitzpatrick stepped in front of tight end Colston Loveland and picked off a Tyson Bagent pass. That takeaway was the Jets’ first interception in 643 pass attempts and closed an NFL-record run of 20 consecutive games without one, AP reported.
It was also Fitzpatrick’s first game back after a groin injury forced him out of New York’s regular-season opener at Tennessee last month. The drought he helped break was not a short rough patch. It was historic.
The Jets had gone 83 regulation quarters between interceptions, not counting an overtime loss to Green Bay in Week 2. They were the first team in NFL history to finish an entire season without an interception since the league started tracking the statistic in 1933.
Chicago almost gave New York the breakthrough earlier. With about 4½ minutes left in the first quarter, defensive lineman T’Vondre Sweat intercepted Bagent. The play did not stand. Cornerback Azareye’h Thomas was flagged for illegal use of hands, wiping out the takeaway.
Fitzpatrick’s second-quarter interception did stand. The ball was live, the record was gone, and the long wait was over.
Preseason offers no relief on the official ledger. Andre Cisco, Samuel Womack, and Marcelino McCrary-Ball each had a preseason interception. None of those count in the regular-season record books, so the drought stayed intact until Sunday in Chicago.
Coach Aaron Glenn saw this coming as a talking point long before Fitzpatrick got his hands on the football. Before the opener at Tennessee, reporters asked whether he would feel relief when the Jets finally recorded an interception. Glenn, who had 41 interceptions across 15 NFL seasons as a player, did not treat the drought like a mystery to solve in the meeting room.
He said the bigger relief would be the media moving on.
"I think it would be a relief to hear you guys stop talking about it, first and foremost,"
Glenn told reporters. He added that he does not hammer the drought with his players. The emphasis, he said, is simpler and harder: go after the ball, punch it out, and treat takeaways as central to winning and losing.
"But, listen, I really don’t talk to our guys about it too much, you know. The thing that we talk about more is just making sure that we go after the ball, making sure that we punch the ball out, making sure that we emphasis that takeaways are a huge part when it comes to winning and losing in this league."
That is the standard any serious defense should already live by. Twenty games without an interception is not bad luck. It is a failure to finish plays that decide field position, possessions, and games.
Fitzpatrick’s return mattered. A veteran safety who can break on the ball is exactly the kind of player a takeaway-starved defense needs. Stepping in front of Loveland and finishing the play is the job description. For one afternoon in Chicago, the Jets finally met it.
The larger picture is still blunt. An entire prior season with zero interceptions. Twenty straight games. Six hundred forty-three pass attempts. Eighty-three regulation quarters. Those numbers do not vanish because one ball was caught.
Glenn is right that takeaways travel with winning football. Fans and taxpayers of big-market franchises are right to expect more than moral victories and snapped skids. The Jets got the interception. Now they have to prove it was the start of a habit, not a one-off escape from a record no team should ever own.
Records like this do not build themselves. Defenses that cannot take the ball will keep giving games away, and no amount of spin changes that.
