crystalline said:
Cool. The Troy Brown strip and the fumble in the Dallas game both stick in my mind - so I would have guessed the turnover rate was much higher. Especially because you can justify it by saying that defensive players don't practice protecting the football.
And this explains why Belichick coaches his guys to run the ball back.
Is the rate much higher after fumble recoveries? That might be harder to test because there's a lot of judgement call as to when the recovery stops and the runback begins.
There were
262 plays that ended in fumbles in 2014. Exclude the 8 that were interceptions that resulted in fumbles by the returning team, that meant that there were 254 fumbles by the team on offense. I don't know how to break those down into fumble recoveries by the defense vs the offense, so I can't tell you how many times the defense didn't choose to advance the ball, and in any case that figure probably wouldn't be of much use since a recovering defender at the bottom of the pile on top of the ball is not going to advance the ball.
However, what I can say is that of the 254, 70 resulted in returns, which by definition is only done by the defense. Of those returns, only 3 resulted in a fumble by the returning defender. (None of the non-returned fumbles were followed by a second fumble, in case you were wondering.) It's such a low rate I can list all 3 occurrences here:
- CIN @ NE: Andy Dalton pass complete deep middle to A.J. Green for 19 yards (tackle by Darrelle Revis). A.J. Green fumbles (forced by Darrelle Revis), recovered by Jamie Collins at CIN-28 and returned for 3 yards (tackle by Giovani Bernard). Jamie Collins fumbles (forced by Giovani Bernard), recovered by Alfonzo Dennard at CIN-25 and returned for 3 yards (tackle by Giovani Bernard)
- NO @ DAL: Drew Brees pass complete short middle to Jimmy Graham for 16 yards (tackle by Rolando McClain). Jimmy Graham fumbles (forced by Rolando McClain), recovered by J.J. Wilcox at DAL-10 and returned for 11 yards (tackle by Jimmy Graham). J.J. Wilcox fumbles (forced by Jimmy Graham), recovered by Brandon Carr at DAL-23 and returned for 11 yards (tackle by Jimmy Graham)
- TAM @ ATL: Matt Ryan pass complete short right to Levine Toilolo for 13 yards (tackle by Alterraun Verner). Levine Toilolo fumbles (forced by Alterraun Verner), recovered by Mark Barron at TAM-21 and returned for 8 yards (tackle by Devin Hester). Mark Barron fumbles (forced by Devin Hester), recovered by Devin Hester at TAM-37 and returned for 8 yards (tackle by Devin Hester)
I argue in the article that the first of these 3 fumbles, if you saw it, was really a Collins mid-tackle lateral that was ruled a fumble (and thus Dennard's return was negated because you can't advance a fumble with less than 2 minutes left). But even counting that one, that's 3 out of 70 fumble returns that resulted in second fumbles, or 4.2%.