Top 25 Quarterbacks by Fumble%

The numbers from our previous posts on quarterback fumbles don't really apply here. There, I was focused on how likely a QB was to put the ball on the ground when he got hit, in large part to see how the recently retired Kurt Warner compared to the rest of the world. Here, we're more worried about how likely a QB is to fumble in general. We're going to go with fumbles divided by (attempts + rushes) as a simple and easy way to get a general idea. However, we'll express it in terms of average number of dropbacks per fumble, because I think that conveys meaning better than a fairly narrow band of low percentages does. We'd include sacks in the calculations, but we don't have them for all players, and they actually wouldn't change the numbers all that much.

In point of fact, we're going to be measuring some of the same thing that the last list did. Quarterbacks who are sacked more tend to fumble more. The majority of QB fumbles come on sacks; a relatively small number of plays. The second largest group, by far, is botched snaps. These fumbles are not created equal. Botched snaps are recovered by the offense 75% to 80% of the time, sack fumbles, a bit less than 50% of the time. However, we don't have a breakdown of what kind of fumbles a player made, so we have to make do.

Players will be listed in ascending order, with their Dropbacks per fumble behind them. Hall of Famers are in bold. Players who are currently active, or were active recently enough that they are not yet eligible for the Hall are in italics.

25) Carson Palmer - 77.17
24) Drew Brees - 77.42
23) Milt Plum - 77.56
22) Marc Bulger - 78.40
21) Dan Marino - 78.73
20) Jim Hart - 80.55
19) Jim Everett - 80.94
18) Elvis Grbac - 81.50
17) Matt Hasselbeck - 84.04
16) Fran Tarkenton - 85.02
15) Y.A. Tittle - 85.14
14) Daryle Lamonica - 86.47
13) Otto Graham - 86.60
12) Troy Aikman - 86.97
11) George Blanda - 88.15
10) Sonny Jurgensen - 88.88
9) Ken Anderson - 93.69
8) Joe Theismann - 94.21
7) Jim McMahon - 97.2
6) John Brodie - 98.46
5) Joey Harrington - 107.32
4) Joe Montana - 110.34
3) Joe Namath - 116.15
2) Peyton Manning - 127.04
1) Bert Jones - 174.88

Bert Jones, the paragon of football protection. In point of fact, older QBs apparently have an advantage here. At some point, the NFL switched from charging the fumble to the running back on botched handoffs, to charging the quarterback with the fumble. This leads to oddities in fumble rates at both positions. However, since some more recent quarterbacks are able to make this list, I don't think the problem is strong enough to warrant throwing out the data. If I had the whole story on when the change took place, and some time, the data could probably be normalized to account for the change in some way, but it wouldn't be perfect by any means. These are the frustrations of working with these statistics. With an army, time and money, you could do a lot better. I'm just one guy interested in trying to learn a few things.