Fumbles and the lack of turnovers

[ivanvamp]

Game-by-game fumbles:

Game 1 (W)
NE: 3 fumbles, 2 lost
Ari: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 2 (W)
NE: 3 fumbles, 1 lost
Mia: 3 fumbles, 2 lost

Game 3 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
Hou: 2 fumbles, 2 lost

Game 4 (L)
NE: 5 fumbles, 1 lost
Buf: 0 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 5 (W)
NE: 0 fumbles, 0 lost
Cle: 2 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 6 (W)
NE: 0 fumbles, 0 lost
Cin: 0 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 7 (W)
NE: 2 fumbles, 2 lost
Pit: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 8 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
Buf: 2 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 9 (L)
NE: 3 fumbles, 1 lost
Sea: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 10 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
SF: 5 fumbles, 0 lost

TOTALS
NE: 19 fumbles, 7 lost (36.8% lost)
Opp: 17 fumbles, 4 lost (23.5% lost)

So the Patriots have gotten pretty lucky in terms of their own fumbles being lost, but my goodness, they are AWFULLY unlucky when it comes to recovering the other team's fumbles. They have caused 11 fumbles in the last 6 games, with ZERO recoveries. That's a remarkable statistic. If each fumble is a 50/50 proposition, the odds of recovering 0 fumbles in 11 straight chances is 1/2048.

So they're *causing* fumbles. They're just not getting them. If they start getting them, this defense - and correspondingly, the offense - looks a lot better. It's really incredible how well this team is playing considering the dearth of turnovers caused.

 

[Ring 6]

Game-by-game fumbles:

Game 1 (W)
NE: 3 fumbles, 2 lost
Ari: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 2 (W)
NE: 3 fumbles, 1 lost
Mia: 3 fumbles, 2 lost

Game 3 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
Hou: 2 fumbles, 2 lost

Game 4 (L)
NE: 5 fumbles, 1 lost
Buf: 0 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 5 (W)
NE: 0 fumbles, 0 lost
Cle: 2 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 6 (W)
NE: 0 fumbles, 0 lost
Cin: 0 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 7 (W)
NE: 2 fumbles, 2 lost
Pit: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 8 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
Buf: 2 fumbles, 0 lost

Game 9 (L)
NE: 3 fumbles, 1 lost
Sea: 1 fumble, 0 lost

Game 10 (W)
NE: 1 fumble, 0 lost
SF: 5 fumbles, 0 lost

TOTALS
NE: 19 fumbles, 7 lost (36.8% lost)
Opp: 17 fumbles, 4 lost (23.5% lost)

So the Patriots have gotten pretty lucky in terms of their own fumbles being lost, but my goodness, they are AWFULLY unlucky when it comes to recovering the other team's fumbles. They have caused 11 fumbles in the last 6 games, with ZERO recoveries. That's a remarkable statistic. If each fumble is a 50/50 proposition, the odds of recovering 0 fumbles in 11 straight chances is 1/2048.

So they're *causing* fumbles. They're just not getting them. If they start getting them, this defense - and correspondingly, the offense - looks a lot better. It's really incredible how well this team is playing considering the dearth of turnovers caused.

Is recovering a fumble a skill that an NFL team has or is it luck?
I'd say there is skill in recovering a football but NFL players pretty much all possess that skill ( hell we all learned how to in peewees)
This is why any given Sunday. A fumble is a huge game changing play and winning or losing can be determined by those bounces.

 

[ivanvamp]

Is recovering a fumble a skill that a gram had or is it luck?
I'd say there is skill in recovering a football but NFL players pretty much all possess that skill ( hell we all learned how to in peewees)
This is why any given Sunday. A fumble is a huge game changing play and winning or losing can be determined by those bounces.

I agree Andy.

I think at the NFL level, causing fumbles is a skill (some teams work harder on pure tackling, and others work harder at stripping the ball, for example), but recovering them is often just a weird bounce of the ball. I still remember the second Giants Super Bowl, when NY was driving in NE territory, Manningham caught a ball and got hit hard, and fumbled it. There were SIX Patriots surrounding Manningham, in a rough circle within 5 yards of him. There was *one* slight opening between two of the players - directly backward, and the ball bounced EXACTLY in that spot right to a Giants player trailing the play.

What can you do?

 

[JMC00]

2011 defense lead the AFC in takeaways, really didn't help that defense at all.

 

[Ochmed Jones]

Bottom line is playmakers. We do not have enough of them on defense,

People can dice and slice that statement all they want, but good positional players (Hightower, mccourty, Chung, butler, etc) do not a playmaker make.

Watch an Alabama game and you will see playmakers on th defensive side of the ball. De Allen, olb Williams, CB Humphrey, the other CB, ilb foster, ss Jackson (when healthy) etc.

We need playmakers on defense. Replacements for mcginest, wilfork, Seymour, vrabel, bruschi, law, Harrison, etc.

We are developing system players as opposed to playmakers.

 

[Ring 6]

Bottom line is playmakers. We do not have enough of them on defense,

People can dice and slice that statement all they want, but good positional players (Hightower, mccourty, Chung, butler, etc) do not a playmaker make.

Watch an Alabama game and you will see playmakers on th defensive side of the ball. De Allen, olb Williams, CB Humphrey, the other CB, ilb foster, ss Jackson (when healthy) etc.

We need playmakers on defense. Replacements for mcginest, wilfork, Seymour, vrabel, bruschi, law, Harrison, etc.

We are developing system players as opposed to playmakers.

Disagree. We base our defense on discipline and team defense not individual risk taking.

 

[jmt57]

I am not sure what the proper percentage is, but I would not assume that a fumble is a 50-50 proposition of being recovered by either team.

There are many times when the ball hits the ground and the opposition never has an opportunity to recover,. This seems to be especially true with quarterback fumbles, but also to a lesser extent with return man fumbles.

No data to back that up, just an observation.

 

[JMC00]

Bottom line is playmakers. We do not have enough of them on defense,

People can dice and slice that statement all they want, but good positional players (Hightower, mccourty, Chung, butler, etc) do not a playmaker make.

Watch an Alabama game and you will see playmakers on th defensive side of the ball. De Allen, olb Williams, CB Humphrey, the other CB, ilb foster, ss Jackson (when healthy) etc.

We need playmakers on defense. Replacements for mcginest, wilfork, Seymour, vrabel, bruschi, law, Harrison, etc.

We are developing system players as opposed to playmakers.

So who were the playmakers on the 2011? Because they lead the AFC in takeaways

Also completely laughable to use a college team as an example, Belichick can't go recruit any and every player he wants.

 

[SlowGettingUp]

No data to back that up, just an observation.

Here's data - basically it depends on type of fumble. Snap fumbles usually recovered by offense; pass reception and RB run play fumbles usually by defense; QB sacks 50:50:

The definitive analysis of offensive fumbles

 

[ALP]

i remember a defense we had a few years ago that really lived off of turnovers

some of us were saying the D wasn't that great, they just kept getting turnovers (2011 maybe? i forget)

well, come playoff time the turnovers stopped

ill take a reversal of that this year

 

[Vindicate]

The idea that fumbles are 50/50 is a sort of... hard to validate? At the end of the day, even with analysis, it is based upon observational data. Which doesn't necessarily validate a finding (Just ask Romney or Hilary). Truth is there are so many damn variables involved in a fumble - where it happens, how it happens (which right there you have possibly thousands of combinations if you truly consider every possibility), it's just impossible to get a true measurement. It's the unobserved confounder at its best, folks.

Also kind of explains why football is so difficult to statistically measure. There are an atrocious amount of variables going on at any given time. Contrast this with baseball, which is largely one on one matchups with not too much variance.

 

[Ochmed Jones]

Disagree. We base our defense on discipline and team defense not individual risk taking.

Who said you had to be a risk taker in order to make plays?

 

[Ochmed Jones]

So who were the playmakers on the 2011? Because they lead the AFC in takeaways

Also completely laughable to use a college team as an example, Belichick can't go recruit any and every player he wants.

1.) who said being a playmaker means turnovers?
2.) Is bb not 100% in charge of patriots personnel? Does he not have complete control over the draft, free agents and trades?

 

[patfanken]

Bottom line is playmakers. We do not have enough of them on defense,

People can dice and slice that statement all they want, but good positional players (Hightower, mccourty, Chung, butler, etc) do not a playmaker make.

Watch an Alabama game and you will see playmakers on th defensive side of the ball. De Allen, olb Williams, CB Humphrey, the other CB, ilb foster, ss Jackson (when healthy) etc.

We need playmakers on defense. Replacements for mcginest, wilfork, Seymour, vrabel, bruschi, law, Harrison, etc.

We are developing system players as opposed to playmakers.

] This is EXACTLY the wrong message. What you want are great individual players (well we all want that, but the question is at what expense)

Get this though through your head. The SUM is greater than the individual parts. Say it over and over until it become part of your thought process. THAT is what great defense is all about. The 2011 defense sucked. Look at that group as indivudual players compared to this year and the difference is palpable. But that 2011 was better as a group than they were as individuals. They also turned the ball over better than any other team in the league. The problem with that is that you can never count on those. We had opportunities in the 2011 superbowl. Any one of those 4 fumbles would have changed the results. As luck would have it, the only one we recovered was negated by a penalty (and a very minor one IIRC)

This season for some reason, we have been almost bereft of TO's We are -2 in fumbles and I am guessing here, plus 4 or 5 in picks. Those are historically VERY unPatriot like numbers....yet the defense is STILL at the top of the league in scoring D and would be a whole lot better in all those other stats IF we had been turning the ball over at previous levels.

Add 2 TO's to each game and nothing else, and the consequences of those TO's and we wouldn't be talking about what is wrong with the defense today, yesterday, and the day before that, etc, etc. Just look at the effect of the TO's had in the Houston game.

Fortunately TO's generally come in bunches. I look forward to those bunches.

 

[oldrover]

2011 defense lead the AFC in takeaways, really didn't help that defense at all.

Yeah... except for going to the Super Bowl... and giving up 21 points total. But besides that, they were horrible.

 

[Ochmed Jones]

] This is EXACTLY the wrong message. What you want are great individual players (well we all want that, but the question is at what expense)

Get this though through your head. The SUM is greater than the individual parts. Say it over and over until it become part of your thought process. THAT is what great defense is all about. The 2011 defense sucked. Look at that group as indivudual players compared to this year and the difference is palpable. But that 2011 was better as a group than they were as individuals. They also turned the ball over better than any other team in the league. The problem with that is that you can never count on those. We had opportunities in the 2011 superbowl. Any one of those 4 fumbles would have changed the results. As luck would have it, the only one we recovered was negated by a penalty (and a very minor one IIRC)

This season for some reason, we have been almost bereft of TO's We are -2 in fumbles and I am guessing here, plus 4 or 5 in picks. Those are historically VERY unPatriot like numbers....yet the defense is STILL at the top of the league in scoring D and would be a whole lot better in all those other stats IF we had been turning the ball over at previous levels.

Add 2 TO's to each game and nothing else, and the consequences of those TO's and we wouldn't be talking about what is wrong with the defense today, yesterday, and the day before that, etc, etc. Just look at the effect of the TO's had in the Houston game.

Fortunately TO's generally come in bunches. I look forward to those bunches.

Again, there seems to be a lack of understanding with what a playmaker is.

A playmaker is someone who makes plays, usually at critical moments in each game.

Why people insist on looking at this term in the negative is confusing to me.

A few years ago, in a playoff game, ty law picked off manning 3 times. I do not remember him being a show boater or playing outside the system.

Once In the regular season mcginest and Washington stuff an Indy running back to help win a game for us. No one said they were show boaters or played outside the system.

Our defense is a good defense, but to be a championship defense, we need playmakers!