Fumbles recovered=2, WTF?
It looks to me like we recovered TWO (insert sadface here) fumbles this season. This lands us at the less than lofty rank of 126, where we sneak in just ahead of Mississippi State, who picked up 1. This just seems uncanny and highly unlikely, but I think it's the second season in a row where this stat has been very low. I'm trying to wrap my head around this, as it doesn't seem simply coincidental.
Thoughts?
(edited title to prove I can spell 'fumble')
January 12th, 2016 at 11:27 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 11:29 AM ^
Fumble recoveries are somewhat random (though not entirely in my opinion, there is something to hussle, scheme, and being in the correct position to recover fumbles), but forcing fumbles is really anything but.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:03 PM ^
True, forcing fumbles is not, but I would argue that forcing fumbles is more about the other team's discipline with the ball --keep five points of contact when you are carrying the ball and it's going to be pretty hard for the defense to force a fumble.
As for fumble recoveries, Mathlete (among others) study has shown that
-Sacks produce fumble at an obscene rate compared to any other play
-Don’t skimp on the fundamentals, poor snaps and hand-offs are a major source of fumbles
-Positive plays are good for the offense, getting past the line of scrimmage greatly reduces the chance that a fumble occurs, but increases the defense’s chances at a recovery if one is forced
-Hitting ball carriers behind the line of scrimmage is a good way for a defense to generate fumbles
-HOLD ON TO THE DAMN BALL!
-Punt returns are the most likely play to result in a lost fumble.
-Not all fumbles are created equally, defenses recover nearly 70% of fumbles that are forced and only 45% when they are not.
-Quarterbacks are fumble prone but their teams are better at recovering them than other players’ fumbles
January 12th, 2016 at 12:14 PM ^
The only issue with the part about fumbles from sacks is the issue SC mentioned above in the different types of sacks. More likely to get a fumble when you have a fast edge rusher than when you have 4 SDE/DT types on the line and just collapse the pocket and the QB can prepare to be sacked.
January 12th, 2016 at 1:11 PM ^
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January 12th, 2016 at 12:15 PM ^
I agree forcing them absolutely not random, but recovering them mostly is. When stripped the ball can go anywhere from straight down to popping up in the air, when it hits the ground it can bounce just about any direction. Hustle helps but the recovery outcome is most heavily dependent on where the strip/fumble occurs on the field and which way the ball bounces.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:26 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 11:26 AM ^
We did a horrible job in creating turnovers this year. We got more INTs, we got more sacks and forced more punts...but fumbles recovered can create a short field.
We have to work in this area. That said, we didn't have a TON of chances when I think back.
...but this was definitely the anti-2011 year when it seemed like every bounce went our way.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:29 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 12:48 PM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 4:00 PM ^
I believe it was a point of emphasis of Durkin to try to strip the ball. He may have even drilled into the D's head so much to the detriment of tackling. Seemed like so many times you'd see our guys swiping at the ball, but our guy not tackling him, giving up a score. Even with the emphasis, for some reason we weren't able to create that many fumbles, and recover even less.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:28 AM ^
So it isn't just bad luck.
Some of it is the lack of snaps the defense faced, but for whatever reason Michigan wasn't very good at getting the ball out. Part of this is not having a true pass rusher on the edge, it's more of a pocket push that the QB can see coming. The Cover 1 scheme also takes the DBs eyes off the ball, which doesn't help recover fumbles and doesn't spring defenders on ball carriers unexpectedly, but mostly I don't think it's scheme based.
Still, while I like attacking the fooball, tackling the ball carrier needs to come first Hill.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:42 AM ^
It seems that Durkin was content just shutting the opponent down and forcing a 3 and out instead of going for interceptions. When the CBs are in man without safety help they can't really turn to look for the interception and need to play the WR. Against teams like OSU, it seems like those offenses will get yards regardless so it can be a big advantage to be able to look for the turnover. Hoping to see Brown change up coverages more to force interceptions.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^
I think you nailed it with the first point. Sacks being up didn't create more fumble opportunities because they were mostly just running through the qb up the middle. We didn't have many opportunites for blindside pancakes or the edge rusher who knocks the qb's arm as he's trying to throw. The latter "sacks" are a major part of the correlation between sacks and fumbles forced.
I also wonder if our LB play contributed to our lack of forced fumbles. It seems to me that a lot of fumbles from RBs come from athletic LBs and safeties making flying, aggressive tackles that result in an arm knocking the ball out. Never saw a lot of that out of our LBs.
January 12th, 2016 at 1:10 PM ^
SC nailed it in my opinion.
We didnt have an elite edge rusher or OLBs who come with velocity and speed who make those impact plays. On the DL that was supposed to be a Mario O or Charlton type and one had an injury and the other remains an athletic guy who is still not all there as a football player. And we know the story of the LBs.
When Don Brown came over I reviewed their LBs vs ours and they had one guy (Steven Daniels) who had something like 7 sacks and 16 TFL. He is a chaos player. Meanwhile Bolden and Morgan combined had something like 2 sacks and 5 TFL. Those are not chaos players - they are play your role types and dont give up big play types.
We didnt have Calhoun level type of DEs nor OSU type OLBs to create those chaos plays - most of ours came through our DTs and our "large" DEs of the 300 lb variety.... RJS was a guy who was more of a placeholder; he did a decent job but not a guy who is going to change a game.
Out front 7 just didnt have those type of guys and you hope this next wave of Ron Johnsons, Devin Bushs, Shelton Johnsons et al are different. And guys like Marshall pull their head out of their a$$... and Charlton can figure it all out next year as he is the one upperclassmen in the front 7 who you could see as an explosive edge athlete.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:00 PM ^
SC, question for you about technique: One of the talking heads (maybe Millen?) mentioned during a game that Michigan "rips down" on the ball rather than "punching up". Seemed pretty lame to me, but I actually started paying attention to that technique a lot during the year. It did seem to not work very well.
What I saw (anecdotally) was when you hammer your arm "down" on the ball as a defender, the ball goes into the ball carrier's stomach or thigh, which allows them to re-grip. I have to wonder if the talking head was right, maybe an upward punch is better. if you get under the ball, there is nothing to stop it from squirting up/out of a ball carrier's arm.
Is this a difference in how DCs teach technique? Are there other pros/cons?
January 12th, 2016 at 12:17 PM ^
I do believe, though, that when wrapping up, punching up results in more fumbles, because that's where the weakness is in how the ball carrier holds onto the ball. But, for instance, typically with QBs you want to rip down because you are trying to wrap up their arms and because of the way they hold the ball in the pocket.
Tackling technique is something each DC and position coach has and teaches. It may differ under Brown than it did Durkin, I haven't really looked at it. FWIW, BC was 17thin fumbles forced per game last year with 1.17 (14 on the season). But Florida was also 6th in the nation (1.42 per game) in Durkin's final year there (BC was last in 2014 oddly).
Really think it's just about getting to the point with technique where you are focusing on the details more than other things.
January 12th, 2016 at 1:19 PM ^
Yep I am not going to do any transitive properties based on BC last year because I tried that last year when Durkin arrived and I presumed we'd get 75%+ of the production he got out of that FL defense.
Gedeon could not beat out Bolden (and frankly was the one player who I thought really struggled vs UF in the bowl) and next to him will be a lot of unknowns or potential true freshman who you just hope will be in the right spot 90% of the time - forget trying to cause turnovers. And the DL is the same DL but even bulkier with Mone back.
The best chance for any real change at least in 2016 is Charlton really putting it all together - and Lawrence Marshal exiting the doghouse. At some point if I am Marshall I have to look over at my HS teammate at MSU who has turned into one of the best DL in all of America and say "hey we used to be sort of equals albeit at diff positions.... I want to be like that too - maybe I need to put the work in."
Durkin did fine with what he had - we had deficiencies on defense in athletiicism at the 2nd level and once Mario O went down you basically just had a "jumbo" DL package out there all the time which is usually great for stuffing the run but outside of Henry and Wormley was not a group of guys which will disrupt a backfield. With that said you can create fumbles down the field after a 5 yard run or whatnot but that goes back to those LBs. And we know the story there.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:28 AM ^
But if anything, this is a good sign right? Hoke was 11-2 in 2011 but remember how many fubles we recovered? My memory says it was ALL of the fumbles.
It means that we were actually good this past season, and not lucky. Move to the mean next season with the same dominant defense and we will be even better.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:31 AM ^
I was 2 minutes too late!
January 12th, 2016 at 5:33 PM ^
it was actually 74% overall which ranked #1 in the entire country for that season and by a whopping 6% from the next best team. Just to show how good that was....................that was the 2nd highest fumble recovery percentage by a team in the last 7 years in CFB.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:28 AM ^
Do hurry up teams create more turnovers?
I would think that they would because it would mean the other team has the ball more. And if the other team is running more plays, more turnovers can be created.
I wonder where we were in plays per game in comparison to everyone else. It seemed like we did fairly well in that category. And you can't get a defensive fumble recovery when your offense is on the field putting together a Rudockian drive.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:32 AM ^
But not adjusting Michigan to the average snap count likely doesn't make them average in forced fumbles or fumble recoveries. There is more to it.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:32 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 11:30 AM ^
I actually see this with a silver lining. Hoke's first year was way above expectations, but we had a ton of turnover luck that year which was bound to go down. This year, our team exceeded expectations, and the turnover luck can only go up.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:56 PM ^
Mississippi State feebly raises hand to object...
January 12th, 2016 at 11:32 AM ^
This is good. We had this great season without much "luck."
Some day it will regress toward the mean and we will have luck on our side.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:32 AM ^
... and we still got to 10 wins somehow. I hope to see a more hostile defense from Don Brown.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:00 PM ^
We have no excuse next year. Our next 2 opponents finished 2015 like this:
- Hawaii (-23 margin, ranked 127th [dead last] )
- UCF (-20, 126th)
For reference, we were -4, ranked 92nd.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:41 AM ^
Opponents fumbled 11 times, only 2 of them were recovered. I don't remember very many of them but I'm guessing some of them were botched exchanges that had no chance of being recovered. One of the recoveries was the Oregon State punt snap.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:43 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 12:15 PM ^
The recovered fumble was in the first quarter.
January 12th, 2016 at 6:13 PM ^
WD editing his post to remove any trace of his mistake in 5, 4, 3, 2...
January 12th, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^
I will kindly see myself out. Go Blue!
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January 12th, 2016 at 11:48 AM ^
If memory serves we also sucked at calling the correct "heads or tails" on the coin flip. It seems to me that Harbaugh REALLY wants us to take Michigan to the next level these are the types of details he cant ignore. We need to spend more time at practice calling the correct coin flip and we definitely need to allocate additional time to determine statistically which way the ball will bounce when dislodged and making sure our guys go to that place instead of running the other way.
Why do I have to think of everything?
January 12th, 2016 at 12:56 PM ^
Yeah, we definitely need more aggressive captains. Hoke brought in the talent but they just couldn't grasp the Lagrangian mechanics well enough to truly dominate. Harbaugh will produce top notch tossers in no time.
January 12th, 2016 at 1:57 PM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 3:05 PM ^
I'll fill out the tax forms and Hackett can put the check for my consulting fee in the mail.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:50 AM ^
I have a feeling unleashing Peppers blitzing off the edge is going to result in a couple more fumbles. I'm sure the coaches see the same stats we are and will stress it beginning this spring.
January 12th, 2016 at 11:58 AM ^
We didn't recover that fumbled snap against MSU? That would have been big.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:49 PM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 12:00 PM ^
In 2011, Thomas Gordon took an advance loan on gypsy favors that let him force and recover an anomalously high number of fumbles that year. Unfortunately, Gordon was running low on cash when it came time to pay the gypsy two years later when he graduated (hey, Zingerman's ain't cheap), so he told her that his buddies Jourdan and Channing would pay her back.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:09 PM ^
that played to our strengths.
Press man corners, in-your-face pass rush. If we tried for turnovers we would've grabbed a few more but got burned way more times. One of the TDs scored on us was because the DB (I think it was Clark) tried to go for the strip. The attempt failed, result was a TD.
Turnovers were a casualty of our style of play, but overall I'm happy with the result.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:23 PM ^
In case you're curious about the statistical side of it... the answer is bad luck. A good summary (NFL-based) This comes from Football Outsiders writing, but there's really no difference in college. A few other links below the FO take if anyone is interested in it.
Recovery of a fumble, despite being the product of hard work, is almost entirely random.
Stripping the ball is a skill. Holding onto the ball is a skill. Pouncing on the ball as it is bouncing all over the place is not a skill. There is no correlation whatsoever between the percentage of fumbles recovered by a team in one year and the percentage they recover in the next year. The odds of recovery are based solely on the type of play involved, not the teams or any of their players.
Fans like to insist that specific coaches can teach their teams to recover more fumbles by swarming to the ball. Chicago's Lovie Smith, in particular, is supposed to have this ability. However, in Smith’s first three seasons as head coach of the Bears, their rate of fumble recovery on defense went from a league-best 76 percent in 2004 to a league-worst 33 percent in 2005, then back to 67 percent in 2006.
Fumble recovery is equally erratic on offense. In 2008, the Bears fumbled 12 times on offense and recovered only three of them. In 2009, the Bears fumbled 18 times on offense, but recovered 13 of them.
Fumble recovery is a major reason why the general public overestimates or underestimates certain teams. Fumbles are huge, turning-point plays that dramatically impact wins and losses in the past, while fumble recovery percentage says absolutely nothing about a team's chances of winning games in the future. With this in mind, Football Outsiders stats treat all fumbles as equal, penalizing them based on the likelihood of each type of fumble (run, pass, sack, etc.) being recovered by the defense.
Other plays that qualify as "non-predictive events" include blocked kicks and touchdowns during turnover returns. These plays are not "lucky," per se, but they have no value whatsoever for predicting future performance.
Pro Football Prospectus 2005, New Orleans chapter (Source: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/fo-basics)
Other Reading:
Football Study Hall (http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2015/1/30/7947287/college-football-tur…)
PFF's take (https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2011/04/18/stat-sheet-misconcepti…)
January 12th, 2016 at 1:16 PM ^
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January 13th, 2016 at 12:02 AM ^
January 12th, 2016 at 12:28 PM ^
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January 12th, 2016 at 12:31 PM ^
Rivals, opponents... I'm sure I'm missing a few.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:45 PM ^
He's not a fan (at least I don't think he is) but he keeps talking about turnovers in between his rants about how "Frozen" is a stealth allegory about the Third Reich.
How could you forget?