...
I realized I couldn't really say how many fumbles per touch is a decent stat. So I grabbed the 4 RBs ahead of Tate to see how many fumbles per touch, and lost fumbles per touch, each had to be able to compare Tate to something. Touches include rushing, receiving, and punt/kick returns.
Touches per fumble:
Matthews: 111
Tate: 82
Gerhart: 71
Spiller: 57
Best: 57
Touches per fumble lost:
Matthews: 184
Tate: 123
Spiller: 107
Gerhart: 101
Best: 76
To put that into some NFL comparisons, grabbing RBs at random (the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, and 15th RBs) from my dynasty league scoring system, plus Steve Slaton. Just doing fumbles lost as that's all MFL has in the stats page:
Touches per fumble lost
A Peterson : 60
TJones: No fumbles lost in 342 touches.
Addai: 270 (only 1 fumble lost)
JStewart: 119
Forte: 105
Slaton: 35
Doesn't look like he's done that poorly in hanging onto the ball compared to other draftees or to an admittedly small sampling of NFL players.
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It is interesting but it is apples to oranges. You are comparing college fumbles with NFL fumbles. In college defensive players are taught to go for the tackle, not the strip, with good technique. In the NFL, defensive secondaries are coached on how to strip a ball.Also in the NFL you are talking the best of the best, maybe 60 or so rooks make a roster each year. Hell of a lot of guys that will never get a sniff at the pros are starting defenders in college.
Well, first, I wanted a quick glance on if Tate has a fumbling problem as I have zero information on the topic going into reading this thread. I by no means think what I did was a complete analysis. It was a quick look, but I think it was more than enough to tell me if more investigation is warranted. Tate was compared to the other top 5 drafted RBs and that is apples to apples using your logic. If he's got a problem then all of the top RB prospects have the same problem, and all but Matthews has the problem worse.Second, and the real reason I'm replying, is that I read the thing about college players being taught to go for tackles not stripping the ball, and I find myself questioning the logic behind it. Getting a turnover is just as beneficial in college as it is in the pros so they would have the same motivation to strip the ball. Now that said, I can also see a valid argument that pro players have mastered more things and have more time to focus on stripping the ball versus more basic skills (like tackling). I also think a 5 year old can rebut that argument based on how lousy the NFL is at tackling these days. Though maybe that is more the trying to get on Sports Center with a big hit phenomenon, I don't know.
But to get to a point, I don't think the statement about college vs pro fumbling is a given, and it's an interesting question. One worth looking at. So I decided to determine fumbles per game by all NCAA Div IA teams and the same for all NFL teams and see if there is any merit to college teams fumbling less than pro teams. I'd rather do this with fumbles than fumbles lost, but the NCAA website only has fumbles lost as a team statistic so that's what I went with.
Results:
College teams lost fumbles an average of .81 times per game, with a standard deviation of .26
NFL teams lost fumbles an average of .68 times per game with a standard deviation of .19
So lost fumbles are more prevalent in college football than they are in the NFL. Now does this shoot the "defense are taught to strip the ball better" argument down? Some but not completely.
I suppose it's possible that your NFL caliber players go to the NFL and fumble more than they did in college because of defenses stripping the ball... but that the non-NFL caliber players in college fumble a tremendous amount more than NFL-caliber players that puts college fumbling higher on the list. Or maybe NFL offenses are more alert about recovering fumbles than are college teams (though again I would argue against that since recovering fumbles is as advantageous in college as in the NFL).
Someone could go and get the fumbling stats of a bunch of NFL players for both college and the pros if they want. And if so, knock yourself out and post the results, I'd be interested to see them. But not enough to spend the time myself putting together a data set for it. Again, I think that's probably a good enough look to suggest that the original college to pro comparison is pretty valid. Fumbles are lost more in college than in the pros, and Tate already has a fumbles lost per touch ratio that puts him in the middle of the pack if not higher compared to the random sampling of NFL RBs. Even without that, he still has done better than his peers amongst the drafted RBs.
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