The Top 10 Individual Turnover-Forcing Seasons in NFL History

In the NFL, it's not always easy to sift through the defensive greats. With so many different positions and various playing styles within each spot, it can be difficult to put one player's achievements over another. How do you value one statistic over another?

Well, we don't have to do that here. We're not so much concerned with which player was better or which player's season was more productive -- rather, we're only looking at which players have had the best overall turnover-inducing seasons.

How do we find the top ones?

Naturally, the process starts with turnover numbers -- interceptions, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. The first and only qualification is built upon these three statistical categories, and it is that a player must have at least two of each during the course of the season. From there, we summed the totals for each category.

That's a good number to sort by, right? Sure it is, but some turnovers are worth more than others in the form of touchdowns. So why settle for good when the deciding factor can be great?

For this reason, we developed a simple formula to give proper weight to turnovers that turned into six points for the players' individual teams. Basically, those turnovers take on an extra six points so the formula looks like this:

Weighted turnovers (wTOV) = total turnovers + (interception scores x 6) + (fumble recovery scores x 6).

For the purpose of accounting for number of games played, we then divide the total wTOV by number of games played to get a player's weighted turnovers per game (wTOV/G).

Based on this final number, here are the 10 most productive turnover seasons by a defender in NFL history.