Fumbles Lost - Stat of the Season - Will it Last?
Michigan leads the nation in fumbles lost with 5 in two games.
Two were on opening possessions and eliminated the ability to get rolling early. Both led to points and a lead for the other team. Three of them were against Army, a team that amplifies mistakes with its ball control offense. It may have also lead to the "turtleing" of the offense the rest of the game.
Without those fumbles, the narrative is much different.
So, will it last? If so, oh no. If not, expectations shouldn't change.
- In the previous 4 year under Harbaugh, Michigan has averaged .47 fumbles lost per game
- If Michigan didn't lose any more fumbles this year, its average would be .42 over 12 games.
- If this year is a crazy outlier and Michigan finishes dead last in fumbles lost - its numbers from the first two games would still go down dramatically (by more than half) to be on par with recent last place teams in that category (around 1.2/game).
- Shea has changed offenses before without these types of problems
- Shea (who has lost the most fumbles in NCAA right now) was apparently injured on the first play of the season
- The coaches are stressing ball security
- I assume most NCAA teams have the majority of their fumble problems early in the season because defenses are typically "ahead" of offenses at this stage
Simply put, I think there is no way that Michigan keeps up this torrid pace of fumbles lost.
Fluke? Early season concentration mistakes? Bad luck? Who knows.
But, history shows it won't last throughout this season.
That alone should drastically change the view of the offense.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:17 AM ^
I ‘member the Illinois game in 1992 when Michigan fumbled TEN times, losing four of them.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:22 AM ^
I was at that game. One of the worst games I have every seen.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:42 AM ^
2008 Toledo being a close second
September 10th, 2019 at 12:30 PM ^
Thank God that time makes the pain of these experiences pass. Those were very bad days.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:52 AM ^
They also threw two picks. SIX turnovers! It's a miracle they managed the tie, which clinched the Rose Bowl.
Probably the only time in history a team was booed by its own fans immediately after clinching the Rose Bowl, but that's what happened.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:48 AM ^
Oh God. I was at that horrible game. Kicked a last second FG to tie that crappy IL team.
Ranked #3 and tied an IL team that was 5-4. Ack.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:22 PM ^
I was at that game. My recollection is that people booed the decision to kick a FG with an iffy Elezovic from a long-ish distance. (It was like 40-45 yards in bad weather.) But they cheered when it went in.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:27 PM ^
It was 4th and 15, and a tie won the league. A national championship was out of the picture (which wouldn't have mattered anyway considering Alabama wound up undefeated and untied), but going for it would have been a CRAZY gamble.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:56 PM ^
Was that the game that was super cold and rainy?
September 10th, 2019 at 10:21 AM ^
I believe they have at least 3 additional fumbles that they recovered so their fumble rate is atrocious.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:48 AM ^
I was going to post this. What is probably more concerning is the total number of fumbles. It's unreal and I definitely think it's going to go way down soon.
If you take away turnovers, our efficiency, especially on defense, looks way better. We've given up only one (garbage time) score in regulation on non-turnover-started drives.
So PLEASE STOP FUMBLING.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:28 AM ^
Yeah, I don't think any rational person assumed Michigan would average 3 fumbles a game for the year.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:25 PM ^
Let's hope regression to the mean will be close to our past average under Harbaugh.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:28 AM ^
I can't imagine it will continue at this rate. It seems like Charbonnet has solidified himself as the #1 back, and he hasn't fumbled yet at all. Shea has had some careless fumbles, but he only had three fumbles all of last year. I wonder if this is exacerbated by his injury.
September 10th, 2019 at 9:32 PM ^
I’m wiling to bet it’s both directly & indirectly due to injury.
Runyan injury reduces quality of pass protection.
Sheas injury likely makes it difficult to him to tightly secure the ball to his side/abdomen. It also makes him less willing to get crunched on the ground by a defender & thus increases the temptation to ditch the ball carelessly immediately before an impending sack.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:33 AM ^
little bit of gambler's fallacy here. those fumbles are already in the books, so there's no reason to expect us to regress to the mean on the season as a whole. hopefully we can at least regress to the mean for the remaining games though.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:38 AM ^
In OP's defense he never said he expected the number to regress to the season long mean. All he really opined was " I think there is no way that Michigan keeps up this torrid pace of fumbles lost." But yeah your last statement is the hope.
September 10th, 2019 at 1:28 PM ^
Gamblers fallacy isn't a thing here. That only comes into play if someone was trying to predict whether there is a fumble on the next offensive play. That should still be random.
But, if each instance is random and you are looking at a set of data over time, there will be a regression to the mean.
That would indicate this crazy rare rate will not keep up.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:35 AM ^
In my opinion, Shea’s first fumble against army was by far the most alarming. He’s going to get tackled like that again this season. He needs to be stronger with the ball and take the sack, less hero ball.
Perhaps optimistic, I feel like the others can be explained away. BVS probably won’t be getting many carries going forward, hopefully DPJ returns and the issues on punt return disappear, and finally with the starting OL back in form blindside strip sacks will be minimized. Just my thoughts.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:36 AM ^
I'm chalking a lot of our early season offensive struggles up to bad luck combined with miscues that should be fairly easy to correct. This is why I'm not TOO worried about the offense just yet. We know that Shea can have a deadly deep ball, we know that our WRs are awesome, we now know that Charbonnet is pretty damn good, and we know our OL should improve with the addition of Runyan and also just in general over the course of the season.
Playcalling has to get better, and I think it will. Gattis is also doing something new. He will improve. And no, I don't think "Harbaugh is calling the plays."
September 10th, 2019 at 10:53 AM ^
Shea Patterson has had a terrible start and needs to do better. Can he?...sure. Will he ever be what we need him to be to win a conference title and beat OSU?...I have my doubts.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:32 AM ^
Shea's passing stats after 2 games
36/58 62.1%completion rate
410 yards 7.1YPA
3TD 0 INT
138.5 passer rating.
I would say those aren't terrible numbers at all, Just has hold onto the ball to get into a good rhythm for the game, before it gets shut down because of turnovers.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:53 AM ^
32/68 = 0.621?
Shea is currently 79th in YPA. That is not great. Really hope he heals up and improves significantly.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:15 PM ^
He’s actually 36/58
September 10th, 2019 at 12:19 PM ^
Thanks, fixed it.
September 11th, 2019 at 4:33 AM ^
I don't care what his numbers say. Anybody who has watched the games knows Shea is the #1 issue with the team so far.
He has 0 INTs because he doesn't take even the slightest risk to make throws. He ignores trying to fit it in anywhere or throw WRs open and opts to throw to Ronnie Bell every chance he gets
Shea Patterson is too conservative of a passer. Its one of the main reasons our offense stalls in the redzone. How often have you seen Shea hit someone in the middle of the endzone while in redzone? Hardly ever, maybe never has it happened, because he is afraid to throw into tight windows. This is also why he is always looking way downfield for the home run as opposed to the receivers in the middle of the field
Basically Shea's biggest issue besides the fumbles are the throws he DOESNT make.
September 11th, 2019 at 9:46 AM ^
I would say those aren't terrible numbers at all, Just has hold onto the ball to get into a good rhythm for the game, before it gets shut down because of turnovers.
Yeah, I agree that the passing numbers aren't bad. But, they aren't great either considering the competition. What doesn't show up in the passing numbers are the fumbles, sacks taken, and missed opportunities because he's not seeing the defense quick enough and getting the ball out and he's not keeping it on the RPOs so he isn't getting the rushing yards that are there and forcing Charbonnet to keep the ball and labor 33 carries for 3 yds/carry. So, it's not that he's making a bunch of bad throws and throwing INTs. He's just holding the ball too much and not taking advantage of the opportunities he has. He needs to see the blitz quicker and get the ball out and give Collins and Black chances in single coverage. They will win those balls most of the time against the MTSUs and Armys of the world.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:21 AM ^
This rate of turnovers won’t continue for the entire season.
Michigan: Hold my beer.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:24 AM ^
We had good luck with both fumbles lost and injuries last season. That appears to be evening out this season.
Injuries are more concerning to me, they have a way of snowballing on you because of lack of depth created by injuries players play out of position or have to play more snaps than they should. Our D Line is a big worry for me, unless Kemp gets some help inside soon his body is not going to hold up.
September 10th, 2019 at 12:21 PM ^
Yeah, but as someone pointed out in another thread - we got out of the Army game with seemingly ZERO major injuries. That's a significant feat.
I'd rather have that stat with the 3 fumbles than reversed. So, I think our overall "luck" was actually pretty good against Army.
September 10th, 2019 at 11:58 AM ^
So, fumbles tend to follow normal distribution curves and are, generally, random events....I argue that we can expect less frequent fumbles per game for the next <undefined> games
...because eventually we won’t have bad luck?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
I don’t know how these statistics work?!
September 10th, 2019 at 12:13 PM ^
What is your point?
With each passing game, Michigan is more and more likely to revert back to the mean?
Statistical outliers on random events like this become nearly impossible to maintain as you add more sample size.
September 10th, 2019 at 1:02 PM ^
We’ve only lost 5 fumbles?
September 10th, 2019 at 5:07 PM ^
It’s fucking PitBull.
We have two weeks to fix it.
September 11th, 2019 at 10:43 AM ^
I wish i could buy in to the "I think there is no way Michigan keeps up this torrid pace of lost fumbles" thought.
Unfortunately fumbles are now seen as a weakness of the team so opponent's for the rest of the season will be working extra hard to exploit this weakness. This alone will likely cause more then average number of fumbles. Every team focuses pregame and in game adjustments to exploit a perceived weakness of the opponent while trying to cover their own weakness.
I am not going full BPONE but do think this is something opponents will try to exploit.
September 11th, 2019 at 4:44 PM ^
All teams work on ball security. Fumbles happen. Some players are more "secure" than others. Usually loving parents and a good overall upbringing helps.