Crimson Red Sports

Outstanding!  No more chicken dances.

It is never good to fumble the ball but when we do we need to recover the ball. We fumbled only 14 times but lost 10 of them. Our opponents fumbled 20 times and only lost 8 of them. As a team we recovered 35% of loose balls. In basketball you would consider that lack of effort. That number should be at least 50%.

Just for fun I looked to see how many fumbles the barn had. They fumbled 30 times and only lost 11 of them.

I wonder how many times we fumbled with HTWMI/TR/EL as the backs.  It seems like it was quite a bit lower.

The year before it looks like we fumbled 24 times and lost 12.  I can't find any fumble statistics from the HTWMI/TR years.  If I remember correctly, TR only fumbled 2 or 3 times throughout his entire career.

 :deadhorse:
This is what the official stats list:

2009   16/9
2010   20/9
2011   12/4
2012   24/12
2013   14/10

Interesting.  So last year was actually one of our better years as far as putting the ball on the ground.  Totally the opposite of my perception of how things went.  I guess the fumbles we lost last year were more costly in terms of game situation, which made them seem like there were more of them.

I know. I'm guessing of the 10 we lost, 8 of them were inside the 10 yd line.  :facepalm:

Good point 2, and those hurt the most. ;)

2011 was a good year with TR and EL at backs.

What do you guys think about this fumble drill?  Doesn't look all that challenging to me.  I'd like to see them line up a gauntlet and have guys on both sides punching out the ball.  Would be more like game activity. But I may be 'off' here.

That's usually how I've seen it done.  But I'm not clear what Bama's drill is like, other than holding two footballs, one under each arm. 

How do our fumble/fumble lost compare to other top schools?

Bama   14-10
LSU     15-10
UGA     22-10
USCe   19-13
Barn    30-11
FSU     13-5
Stanford  20-9

That is interesting to me... while we fumbled fewer than each of those our losses tend to be about equal making our % rate higher for lost balls.  Would love to see the national rankings for that.

A more telling stat would be 'fumbles/lost by starters'.  During the Ingram era we had few fumbles, and most came after the game was decided.  This past year we lost fumbles at critical times, and by starters.  Not good.

I think the new drills is useless, it seems that the fumbles occurred because they were holding the ball exactly that way when they were getting wrapped up instead of putting both hands on the ball upon contact like Ingram and Richardson.

That is an excellent point.

I think these drills are very important. Not because it teaches them the correct way to carry the ball because they learned that in high school. If you do not stress ball security every day in practice it is no big deal when you fumble during the game. You have to practice what you preach and CNS preaches ball security.
 

It definitely helps with the chicken wing problem that some had before contact.

I guess time will tell but it has been my experience that you play the way you practice, if you practice carrying two balls like that then that will become instinctive and that is what you will see in a game. We all know what that leads to.

Maybe a better approach would be to use 1 ball but make them stay after practice and run until they puke if they fumble during practice.

That and if you get a case of the dropsy's, you get a case of the sitsy's as well.

 :lol:

The Drake got a case of the sitsy's at the end of the year.  Maybe that cured him.

I think the Drake had the sitsies because of bad atties.  :lol2:

:lol: :lol:  Indeed, Drake had the red assies.

 :lol: :lol:

That worked for EL.  Unfortunately, Bama couldn't afford to sit Yeldon last year.  At least, not until TR(squared) learns the playbook.

I think you'll see it this year if one of them gets fumble-itis, since it looks like we will have at least 3 RB's in the rotation.

Could be 4 if J. Fowler will quit being scared.

Good point. It will be interesting to see if he will be used primarily as a FB.