ORCHARD PARK - One of the big storylines throughout the 2023 season for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has been his penchant for throwing interceptions.

Mixed in among all the greatness - and there was plenty of greatness as he threw for 4,306 yards (fourth-most in the NFL) and produced a league-leading 44 touchdowns including 29 through the air and a league record-tying 15 rushing by a QB - there were his 18 interceptions.

That’s a big number, second only to the Commanders’ Sam Howell who had 21. It’s a new career-high for Allen, and it continued a disturbing trend over the past three years where he has totaled a whopping 47, more than any QB in the NFL.

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But ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, who is as smart and logical an analyst as there is out there, was railing the other day about all the consternation surrounding Allen’s interceptions, arguing that it should not be a talking point.

“Can we stop this stupid conversation about interceptions and, ‘Oh my gosh, Josh Allen, and it’s going to be the reason that they don’t win a Super Bowl,” said Orlovsky, whose point was that great quarterbacks are always going to push the envelope and therefore, they’re going to throw picks.

He based his theory on this: When the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in the 2020 season, Tom Brady threw 12 interceptions which was tied for sixth-most in the league; in 2021 when the Rams won the Super Bowl, Matthew Stafford tied for the league lead with 17; and in 2022 when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes threw 12 which was tied for seventh-most.

A reader pointed this out to me, which I’ll share. Through his first six NFL seasons Allen has 71 interceptions. By comparison, Peyton Manning had 110, Dan Marino 103, John Elway 96, Brett Favre 93, Drew Brees 82, and Tom Brady 78. Those five are all in, or will be in, the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Offensive coordinator Joe Brady clearly understands this because he knows interceptions are part of the Josh Allen Experience, and he seems perfectly willing to live with that.

“You just have to trust him, right?” Brady said. “Just like any quarterback, they’re not gonna be perfect, and sometimes some of the decisions that might not turn out too well, and other times where they end up turning out as touchdowns and you can get praised for it. To me, it’s more about is it the right decision and correcting it regardless of the results.”

Coach Sean McDermott isn’t quite as willing to put up with turnovers as Brady or Orlovsky. He talks all the time - as does every coach - about how you can’t lose the turnover battle and win consistently in the NFL and the historical numbers bear that out. Teams do lose more than they win if they’re on the wrong side of the turnover battle.

And I’m not here to tell you that interceptions are OK, and neither is Orlovsky or Brady. But I took a closer look at all 18 of Allen’s picks this season and you might be surprised to learn that the damage they caused is less than you might think.

We often hear the term “points off turnovers” which means, how many points did the opponents score immediately after a giveaway. It’s a convenient and easy number to calculate, but giveaways are not all created equal which makes this a bit of a faulty metric.

If the turnover gets returned for a touchdown, or it happens deep in your own territory and puts your own defense in a difficult spot to prevent points, those are impactful. But more times than not, a team will score points off a turnover only because it put together a nice drive that your own defense could have risen up and stopped, but didn’t. To me, those instances aren’t that much different than if you would have punted.

In Buffalo’s case, there were 54 points scored on the possession following an Allen interception as the bulk of his misfires did not have a huge bearing on the real-time game situation or the ultimate outcome.

The outlier, of course, was the disastrous season opener against the Jets when Allen threw a season-high three picks - incredibly, all to safety Jordan Whitehead - and also lost a fumble, and the Jets scored 13 points off three of those. No doubt, that deplorable loss rested on his shoulders because if he doesn’t turn it over four times, the Bills win that game. An awful night, no argument here.

The last one was the fumble with 4:51 left to play that led to the Jets’ go-ahead field goal, though the Bills did rally to tie the game before blowing it in overtime on the walk-off punt return TD. But I’m dealing only with interceptions here, and this is what happened on those.

The first interception came on a deep ball on third-and-8. Not great, but it was like an arm punt as the Jets took over at their own 4. However, the first play after that, Breece Hall broke an 83-yard run to set up a field goal; those “points off turnovers” fall on the Buffalo defense.

The second pick near midfield ended a possession, but the Jets did nothing with it. And the third gave the Jets a drive start at their 43 and they marched to a Zach Wilson TD pass, but again, the defense could have made a stop but didn’t.

Against the Jaguars, from his own 41 on third-and-15 he threw a deep ball that was picked off at the 7, essentially another arm punt. From there, the Bills’ defense allowed Jacksonville to drive 93 yards to a TD that extended their lead to 18-7. The interception really had nothing to do with those “points off turnovers.”

He had a bad one in New England on the first play of the game at his own 25 that set up a Patriots field goal. The one against Tampa Bay was a fluky tipped pass at his own 23 which set up a Bucs TD. Against Denver he made a terrible throw late in the first half that gifted the Broncos a field goal. And in Philadelphia he threw one that set up the Eagles at the Bills 24 early in the fourth quarter from where they drove to a go-ahead TD.

In the finale against Miami, the biggest issue was that he took probable Buffalo points off the board with both of his picks, but Miami did nothing with the first one, then drove 80 yards to a TD after the second.

In my final analysis, the opposition scored points after only 10 of his 18 picks. Of those, four set up easy scores for the opposition (Patriots, Bucs, Broncos, Eagles), six presented situations where the Bills’ defense didn’t hold up and bail out Allen, and the other eight resulted in no “points off turnovers.”

“I’m trying to do whatever I can to help the team win,” Allen said Wednesday during his meeting with reporters. “Same time, I don’t want to throw them; it’s not fun looking at the stat sheet and seeing interceptions, whether it’s before the half, on a Hail Mary attempt, or a long fourth down, it still doesn’t feel great.”

When I pulled him aside after his presser and shared with him the info I just laid out above, he agreed that not all interceptions are the same. But he did add that turnovers are still a bad thing, often for reasons that don’t seem obvious on the stat sheet.

“Sometimes it’s just momentum that you lose,” he said. “It’s something that you can’t see but something you can feel and sometimes it gives them momentum. Again, I don’t want to limit our chances to score points and I’ve done that a couple of times throughout the season and that’s never any fun.

“I guess it’s part of the game, you’re gonna have a bad throw here, you’re gonna have a tip here or there, but the ones that you make bad decisions on, I’ve got to find a way to limit those and not have those anymore because that could come back to bite us and I don’t want to be the reason why.”

Ideally, Allen isn’t throwing 18 interceptions in a season. But at least in 2023, they weren’t a huge problem because in the end the Bills went 11-6, won the AFC East, and earned the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs.

Geno Smith of the Seahawks, Gardner Minschew of the Colts and Justin Fields of the Bears threw only nine picks; Derek Carr of the Saints and Russell Wilson of the Broncos threw eight; and Justin Herbert of the Chargers threw only seven. None of them made it to the postseason.

Allen threw 18; Jalen Hurts of the Eagles threw 15; Mahomes and Tua Tagovailoa of the Dolphins threw 14; Jared Goff of the Lions had 12; and Brock Purdy of the 49ers had 10. They’re all in the postseason.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out twice a week during the season, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Josh Allen's interception problem wasn't all that damaging to Bills