G504

I asked this in the chat last night because the Cowboys games was looking eerily similar to the Cardinals games in terms of fumbles. Do you realized the Cowboys fumbled SEVEN times last night? But we only came away with a whopping two! We always hear the adage "it's better to be lucky than good." Perhaps that's the difference between this and last year: luck isn't on our side. We're way down in turnovers, but it's not because we're not forcing them. I went back and looked at all the box scores, so far we've "forced" TWENTY-SEVEN fumbles! That's a huge number (I put "forced" in quotes because I didn't go and watch all the games again, so I know not all of those we the Max Hall style "huge hit and cough up that happens to bounce right to a teammate for a touchdown," some were high snaps and the QB just falls on it with no Saints with a shot at it). Compare that to last year were we only forced 19 all year!
So why are we 8-3 not 11-0? Of those 27 fumbles by opponents, we've only recovered 11! That's only 40%. Last year, we came away with 14 of the opponents' 19 fumbles. 73%! Huge difference! Why is that? I have no idea, but if you remember last night and the Arizona game, maybe it's just dumb luck. A lot of them are just taking awkward bounces and landing right back in the hands of the opponent, often advancing the ball for more yards than if we got just the tackle, not the fumble. The aforementioned Max Hall "cough up to to a teammate for a touchdown" is a microcosm of our luck this year in fumble recoveries.

http://www.darrylbercegeay.com/wsmith1.jpg