I can’t quit Jameis Winston.

Every time I’m ready to move on from the 2015 first-overall pick — this usually comes after one of his now-patented multi-interception showings — I make the mistake of watching a few of his games on tape and boom: I’m sucked right back in.

After Winston set an NFL record by throwing for at least 400 yards and four touchdowns in back-to-back games, I couldn’t resist the temptation to fire up NFL Gamepass and watch the all-22. I would have liked to say that I came out unimpressed by what I had seen. That would have made things so much easier. But, nope. I had seen enough to travel down this rabbit hole another time.

It’s all there on tape. The downfield accuracy…

The poise in the pocket…

The timing and anticipation…

These aren’t plays that bad quarterbacks make, and Winston makes them on a routine basis.

So here I am, once again, arguing that Winston is a quarterback worth investing in. Now, I don’t think signing Winston to a long-term deal is a sure thing. The odds that he develops into a consistently great quarterback are long. But his odds of producing enough great seasons (one or two over the course of a standard contract ought to do the trick) to justify such a deal are shorter than those of the other players who will be available this offseason, whether through the draft, free agency or trade.

Winston might be the most volatile quarterback in NFL history, and volatility at the quarterback position is typically seen as a bad thing. But unless you are one of the teams with one of the four or five quarterbacks capable of being great consistently, volatility shouldn’t be considered a deal-breaker. In fact, I’d argue that teams without one of those elite quarterbacks are better off with a quarterback like Winston.

But the interceptions! They are bad and nobody in the league has thrown more of them this season … by a wide margin. I just don’t know how useful it is to say interceptions are bad and if you throw a lot of them you are a bad quarterback. There have been plenty of quarterbacks who have thrown a lot of interceptions but have done enough good to make up for it. Because Tampa Bay is a small market team that hasn’t been very good — mostly because of what has been an inept defense in past years — you don’t really hear about Winston’s good plays.

So just how good is Winston’s good? In short, his good has been among the league’s best. Let’s elaborate…

In 2019, his completed passes have averaged 1.11 expected points added. Only one healthy starting quarterback has averaged more, and that’s the MVP favorite Lamar Jackson. But a lot of Jackson’s production in the passing game has come after the catch. Over 82% of his passing EPA has come after the ball gets into his receiver’s hands, while only 52.8% of Winston’s passing EPA has come after the catch, which ranks second lowest behind Matthew Stafford.

In total, Winston has added 175.2 total points on completed air yards alone. That ranks first in the league by a comfortable margin. Only three other quarterbacks have even passed the 100-point mark this season: Dak Prescott (154.5), Russell Wilson (120.6) and Stafford (100.1).

But then there’s the flip side. Winston is also in a league of his own when it comes to bad plays. Now, the average interception costs an NFL team about 4.41 points, and Jameis is right around that league average at 4.6, so quality obviously isn’t a problem. His interceptions are no more damaging than, say, Tom Brady’s interceptions. Quantity is obviously Jameis’ problem, and those 24 interceptions have cost the Bucs 106.9 expected points in total. Baker Mayfield is next on the list with 79.6 expected points lost via interception. Let that sink in.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Aaron Rodgers. His two interceptions have cost the Packers only 11.5 expected points. Yet, despite that 95.4-point gap between Winston and Rodgers on those interception plays, the former — Winston — has still produced more total expected points this season. That’s how good Winston’s been outside of those 24 interceptions plays.

(As an aside, I think we put too much weight on interception totals. Yes, interceptions are bad but so are third-down incompletions, which, on average, cost a team about 1.8 expected points. So the difference between two third-down failures and one interception is small. You would not know that based on how we talk about them.)

When Winston isn’t throwing interceptions, he’s been one of the very best quarterbacks in the league. But you might be wondering if it’s possible for Winston to maintain that level of production if he cuts down on the interceptions. Those picks might just be the byproduct of his aggressive nature as a passer.

It’s difficult to say for sure, but the numbers suggest that his high interception total isn’t necessarily the result of super aggressive play. After reviewing all 24 of his interceptions on tape, I’d say only a handful of them were the result of Winston trying to make a play downfield that wasn’t there. The numbers back this up. The average interception during the 2019 NFL season has traveled 15.3 yards in the air. Among full-time starters, Winston has the seventh-lowest average at 12.3 yards. A whopping 16 of his 24 interceptions came on “short” throws according to the NFL’s play-by-play data. In theory, Winston should be able to cut down on the picks without sacrificing the penchant for throwing downfield.

Regression to the mean should also help drag down Winston’s interception numbers. Most of his picks (14 of them to be exact) have come on his 169 attempts while under pressure. That makes for a league-leading interception rate of 8.3% under pressure. That isn’t good, of course, but also means very little going forward. According to Pro Football Focus’ 2019 QB Annual, the year-to-year correlation on interception rate while under pressure is literally less than zero.

Sometimes, regression to the mean is good! This would be one of those cases.

From a clean pocket, Winston has thrown an interception on 2.6% of his attempts. That’s still above the league average but guys like Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson and Ryan Tannehill are just hundredths of a percentage point better. Clean pocket stats have proven to be the most stable for a quarterback, which bodes well for Winston. Only five quarterbacks have a higher EPA average than Winston, a list that includes Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees and Prescott.

This isn’t a Blake Bortles in 2015 situation. That season, the Jaguars quarterback threw for 4,428 yards and 35 touchdowns while also leading the league in interceptions. He also had a negative EPA from a clean pocket and ranked 21st in average EPA on attempts that weren’t intercepted. Bortles was just straight-up bad, even on the supposedly “good” plays. Beyond the traditional box score numbers, Winston’s 2019 season and Bortles’ 2015 season are nothing alike.

I’d compare Winston’s early career to that of Ben Roethlisberger. Like Winston, Big Ben was able to consistently produce big plays but often tried to do too much and turned the ball over at an alarming rate. Even when adjusting for era, their early-career rate stats are awfully similar. There were also similar concerns about Roethlisberger’s bloated sack rate and lack of down-to-down precision, which certainly apply to Winston. Roethlisberger eventually figured things out — around the same point in his career that Winson’s at now — and developed into one of the league’s best passers. Could the same happen for Jameis?

At his best, Winston has played at an elite level and that should continue in the future. At his worst, the 25-year-old has been awful, but the numbers suggest that there will be fewer of those instances going forward. There will be fluctuations, of course, but that’s why it’s worth making a long-term bet on Winston. If his luck swings in the other direction, you could very well get an MVP season out of him, which should be enough to get a team into Super Bowl contention.

That’s more than you can say about 90% of the quarterbacks in the NFL, and they don’t seem to have any issues getting paid.