Will the real McPickSix please stand up?
Analyzing QB Pick Sixes
This will be a bit of a mini-edition of The Specialist, conveniently not about specialists. Well, sort of. The genesis of this piece comes from former Hall of Fame kicker/punter turned quarterback Micycle McCormick and his unfortunate nickname "McPickSix". Those of you who were around before and during S15 may remember our old simmer Sweetwater affectionately bestowing this nickname on McCormick due to his habit of throwing interceptions that were returned for touchdowns - something that frequently bit his Yeti in the rear end. Micycle was my player, and he was replaced by another Mc who liked pick sixes - Wolfie McDummy. McDummy wasn't helped by having to start at a measly 250 TPE on the second worst team in the S16 league, but even as he reached MVP caliber the pick sixes never ended - culminating in McDummy throwing a pick six in the S24 Ultimus Bowl to help cement a devastating upset loss for the Yeti.
But. Is the McPickSix name rightly deserved? I wanted to find out for myself. Armed with my Python notebooks, some Google-fu, and the power of the BeautifulSoup webscraper, I went and scraped the play-by-play of all 24 seasons of ISFL/NSFL football* (code HERE) and looked for every instance of an interception being returned for a touchdown in the data. I then found the QB responsible for said touchdown, and counted up how many times each QB has done it (code HERE). Finally, I went to the sim's Historical Stats page and counted up the number of games played as a QB and number of passing attempts in order to try and get an average count per each of those metrics (spreadsheet HERE).
*I have actually done this in the past, so this part wasn't actually hard.
Here are the Top 10 all-time Pick Six QBs:
And just like we expected, a Mc is #1! Wolfie McDummy takes the reigns, tied with his doggo companion and Hall of Fame QB Borkus Maximus III at 19 pick sixes - though Borkus has thrown many more passes (more on that later). Mike Boss, the greatest gunslinger (even though he was a pocket passer archetype), comes in third with 18 pick sixes. The former Sabercat QB Chris Orosz is in 4th with 15 pick sixes, and then there is a six-way traffic jam at 14 pick sixes between Nick Pierno, Joliet Christ, Matt Akselsen, Stan Francisco, Ryan Applehort, and Cooter Bigsby. The man who started it all - Micycle McCormick - is down at 11th with 13 pick sixes, tied with Rose Jenkins, Gus Showbiz, Adriana Falconi, and Easton Cole.
Now, this obviously has a bias towards more games played and passes thrown. So let's see the top QBs in efficiently giving free points to the defense.
Per game:
Most of this list are a bunch of early-league busts who simply had to fill spots until better QBs showed up. The notable inclusions in this top 10 are Nick Pierno and Micycle McCormick, checking in at #4 and #10 on this efficiency metric respectively. Pierno is widely regarded as one of the worst QBs of all time to actually keep a starting job, having played 56 games at QB and leading the Yeti during the first half of the 0-32 streak. Micycle finds his way on here as a result of his only 70 games starting as a QB - allowing him to be high on the all time list and this efficiency list at the same time. Wolfie is #13 on this list, and his fellow borker Maximus is way down at #24 having played in 17 more games.
Per attempt:
More games doesn't necessarily mean more throws, though. Once again we see a bunch of these old QBs, and we also see both Colby Jack (1 season) and Chika Fujiwara (3 seasons) who can find their way off this list in due time. Micycle is all the way down at #14, and Wolfie at #15. Maximus is #27 on this list, for comparison.
Per Interception:
I just realized after publication to do this - we see many of our usual suspects here. Wolfie finds himself at #6 on this list (furthering the McPickSix narrative) and Colby Jack is at #7. For all his faults, Nick Pierno is at #15 - he threw so many interceptions that not a ton of them were returned for touchdowns. Micycle is down at #17.
Notable Active Players:
Most of the higher ups on this list are retired players, but there are a few actives who can make their way up this leaderboard.
- Wolfie McDummy (#1-T, 19) has about a season left in him to claim the undisputed Pick Six title. With regression starting to batter him hard, expect this to happen sooner rather than later.
- Easton Cole (#11-T, 13) also has one or two seasons left in his storied career. One or two more pick sixes will push him up to #4 all time, tied with Chris Orosz. Regression is also slamming Cole hard and I would expect him to do this as well. Can he take the #4 spot all for himself with three more? Only time will tell.
- Colby Jack (3) finds himself high up on the efficiency lists. Given he's only played one season, you can fully expect him to fall off this list.
- Brock Phoenix (4), Jay Cue (7), and Monty Jack (2) all find themselves low overall and low on the efficiency lists (efficiency being a bad thing). While we joke about Jay Cue throwing lots of interceptions, he's actually doing pretty well for himself. Monty Jack seems to be the more careful Jack brother, having played 1 extra season and thrown one less pick six.
Once again, you can see all the code for this project (and various other play by play fun) here on my GitHub: https://github.com/infinitempg/play_by_play.
There is also a Google Sheet with all the efficiency numbers here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0
TL;DR: McPickSix is the king, but it's not the Mc who started it all.