The Patriots finally throw an interception and it only took them 9 games

The New England Patriots’ streak without an interception is over. Tom Brady finally threw one against the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday Night Football when DeShawn Shead picked him off in the second quarter. Patriots quarterbacks had thrown 258 passes without an interception all season, and it was Brady’s first interception in 182 straight passes.

The Patriots have been good at avoiding interceptions for a long time with Tom Brady at quarterback, but when he served a four-game suspension at the beginning of the year, Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett stuck to the same philosophy. Nine weeks into the season, the Patriots still hadn’t thrown an interception and they were approaching history.

Only the 1960 Cleveland Browns managed to begin a season with nine consecutive interception-free games. With Jim Brown in the backfield, Cleveland averaged about 32 rushing attempts per game and just 22 passes during an 8-3-1 season.

But the Patriots average more than 31 pass attempts per game, and if the team had managed to avoid throwing an interception to the ball-hawking Seattle Seahawks secondary on Sunday Night Football, it would have matched the Browns’ record to begin a season.

Still, they beat Washington’s record for the most pass attempts to start a season without an interception. Washington had held the record since 2008, when the team opened the season with 251 passes without a pick.

In each of Brady’s last two matchups against Seattle — a win in Super Bowl XLIX and a loss in the 2012 regular season — he threw two interceptions. With Kam Chancellor expected to return to the Seahawks defense in Week 10 after missing four games with a groin injury, avoiding a mistake was going to be more difficult than ever.

“They have playmakers at every level of the defense,” Brady said on WEEI in Boston. “Rushing the passer, linebackers — they have some of the best linebackers in the league — some of the best guys in the secondary. It’s going to be a big challenge for us.”

Brady was still far from his personal-best streak of 11 consecutive regular season games without an interception, set in 2010. However, the Patriots tied a franchise record of eight consecutive games without one (Brian Hoyer threw an interception in clean-up duty in 2010). They fell three games short from the post-merger record of 12 games, set by Washington over a run that spanned the 2007 and 2008 seasons.