Analyst: Patriots Fumble at a ‘Nearly Impossible’ Rate
The Boston Globe
By Nik DeCosta-Klipa @NikDeCostaKlipa
Boston.com Staff | 01.25.15 | 5:32 PM
If Deflategate produced anything of value besides ball jokes and SNL skits, it’s this: during the past five years the Patriots have fumbled at a nearly impossibly low rate, according to football data analyst Warren Sharp. Since 2010, their average plays per fumble lost is 187, compared to the league average of 105. And no one else comes even close. On one hand, a fumble rate that low speaks to the team’s impeccable preparation. On the other, it adds fuel to the accusations of cheating.
This isn’t random chance. As Sharp points out, we would expect this instance to occur once in 16,233.77 chances if fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, “which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win.” Nearly statistically impossible.
Even looking at total fumbles, not just fumbles lost, the Patriots are the only outdoor team in the last 25 years to average 70 plays per fumble or better, according to Sharp:
“The league average from 2010 to 2014 was 50 plays per fumble. For indoor teams, the average was 55 plays per fumble. For outdoor teams, excluding the Patriots, the average was 46 plays per fumble. The Patriots averaged 73 plays per fumble, almost 60 percent more than outdoor teams and almost 50 percent more than the league average the past five years.”
Maybe the Patriots just target players who are particularly good at holding onto the ball? It’s easy to think that during the offseason and in the draft room, Belichick and friends are scouting players who have a knack for not fumbling.
However, Michael Salfino of the Wall Street Journal looked at Patriots players who, since 2010, have logged significant minutes on other teams to compare fumbles rates. His findings:
“Additionally, according to Stats, LLC, the six players who have played extensively for the Patriots and other teams in this span all fumbled far less frequently wearing the New England uniform. Including recovered fumbles, Danny Amendola, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Danny Woodhead, Wes Welker, Brandon LaFell and LeGarrette Blount have lost the ball eight times in 1,482 touches for the Patriots since 2010, or once every 185.3 times. For their other teams, they fumbled 22 times in 1,701 touches (once every 77.3).”
So it can’t be merely personnel, right? For example, Green-Ellis didn’t fumble once in 501 touches for the Patriots since 2010. However, during his next two years with the Cincinnati Bengals he fumbled five times in 524 touches.
Likewise, Amendola hasn’t fumbled once in 82 touches with the Patriots, yet had three fumbles in 162 touches with Ram since 2010. During the same time, Woodhead saw his plays-per-fumble decrease from 171 with the Patriots to just 86 with the Chargers. Blount fumbled every 51.8 plays with the Buccaneers and Steelers, but only every 73 plays with New England.
Yet while Welker only lost the ball every 166 touches with the Patriots, he is still yet to fumble (in 122 touches so far) with the Broncos. And LaFell has actually seen his plays-per-fumble decrease to 76 with the Patriots, from 86.5 with the Panthers.
While it isn’t universal for every individual player, Salfino’s larger finding still stands: in the past five years, players fumble significantly less on the Patriots than they do when playing for other teams. Since his initial report, Sharp wrote a supplemental post showing that from 2007-2014, individual Patriots players with more than 300 touches fumbled once every 107 touches, versus every 67 touches when playing for other teams.
So it isn’t strictly personnel. Could it be the coaching?
Despite Stevan Ridley earning a reputation for being fumble-prone, the stats don’t seem to show that he fumbles at a rate particularly higher than league averages. In fact, since 2010, only one team in the league had a better rate: The Atlanta Falcons, who play in a dome, fumbled only once every 80 plays. Besides the Patriots, no other team in the league broke 70 and no other outdoor team had a better rate than 55. Compared to the average fumble rate for the 31 other teams in the league, per touch Ridley actually has a better chance of holding on.
That hasn’t, however, stopped him from being benched—multiple times—for fumbling. Perhaps Belichick has particularly high standards for his players. And we know turnovers are a statistic that Belichick has focused on in the past. It’s not very realistic that it is something he regularly drills in practice and emphasizes, even if it means benching his running back.
Does this apparent strictness from the coach explain the Patriots’ collective tight grip on the football? Perhaps Belichick has just groomed his team into a statistical anomaly when it comes to fumble rate?
Or perhaps something else has been in the works. As Sharp speculates, maybe they’ve invented a “revolutionary in-house way to protect the ball” or they design plays that don’t put players in the position to fumble. Or maybe it’s the ball.
The Patriots have held the best plays per fumble rate since 2007. Sharp also points out this is the first year the Patriots started outperforming in wet weather games. After going 0-2 in 2006, New England has gone an unprecedented 14-1 in Tom Brady wet weather home games (compared to 51-9 in dry weather home games). According to ProFootballReference.com, from 2001 to 2006, Brady averaged 9.8 fumbles per season. From 2007 to 2014, his fumbles per season decreased to 5.3.
Interestingly, one other thing changed the season prior to 2007: the rules. In 2006, Brady and Peyton Manning successfully lobbied the league to allow road team offenses to bring their own balls, breaking from the rule in which the home team provided all 24 balls. You may have heard of this rule change recently in the news again.
Ultimately, the anomaly of the Patriots’ superior fumble avoidance doesn’t prove anything, besides a distinct advantage on their opponents. But whether it’s coaching, play design or PSI, it’s certainly no coincidence.
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/2015/01/25/patriots-fumble-nearly-impossible-rate/LCgrlUR9qgxDsIgcal9dUI/story.html
Nik DeCosta-Klipa can be reached at
n.decosta-klipa@globe.com or @NikDeCostaKlipa