With time to sit back on the bye and take a bird’s eye view at the NFL, there’s been some noise about Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow’s 11 interceptions being tied with Sam Darnold for the most in the league.

Whether that’s actually a concerning problem, though, is up for debate.

Burrow himself, of course, would say 11 is far too many. But it’s not as simple as looking at the number and calling it a day. The number is exaggerated in the sense that Burrow often makes the right throws, but his targets and/or defenders just make a play.

Bengals head coach Zac Taylor echoed these sentiments recently while chatting with Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com and asked if that number of 11 bothered him:

“They would if he was making bad decisions. He’s really not. You put them into different categories. Is it a poor decision? Is it an inaccurate or late throw? Was someone on offense supposed to be in better positon to do their job? Because a lot of it is trust in these systems. And then sometimes the defender just makes a great play. There’s been several times they’ve fallen into that category. Defenders make good plays and sometimes the ball’s tipped in there and we’ve had a couple of tipped ball picks on plays that the quarterback has to own. But at the end of the day those are the ones he’s going to quickly brush off and move on from because he knows he doesn’t have much control over them.”

Some of Burrow’s picks have been horrific, of course. The one that went back for a touchdown against Cleveland was just a bad throw. Some that have come late in fourth quarters look bad, though the blame wasn’t all on him for those.

And that’s the point — it’s easy to forget Burrow has only played in 19 games. He’s just now entering his second “on field” season. There are going to be growing pains and mistakes. He’s also playing behind a not-so-great offensive line and some of these picks have come while trying to force things with his team behind on the scoreboard.

So no, the picks aren’t a glaring concern. If a bigger chunk of them were just plain bad throws or decisions, sure. But so long as Burrow keeps learning from the ones that are solely his fault, which will naturally make the number trail off, then it’s all good.