Of Fumbles and Quarterbacks (Part 5)

With Kurt Warner's recent retirement, there have been any number of retrospectives on his career in the sports media, yet I don't think that I've heard the fumbling issue brought up specifically even once. It's something that has to be dealt with in any kind of accurate analysis of his career, but it doesn't even get mentioned? That's kind of hard to believe.

One interesting point, in the context of other historical developments with regard to fumbles... when I took 32 QBs out of the pool in order to include career sack statistics in the rates, I ran their numbers with just the rushes and receptions added in. (Fumbles/[attempts+rushes+receptions]) Then I did the same with the more recent passers in the main pool to compare.

An interesting historical shift over the last twenty seasons or so has been the decrease in the number of fumbles by running backs. Backs as recently as the 1980s fumbled at rates that would be unheard of today. For example, Tiki Barber was much maligned for much of his career for fumbling too much. Over the course of his career, he fumbled 1.89% of the time on his rushes and receptions. Adrian Peterson is in the same boat, and has coughed it up 2.00% of the time. Compare to Wendell Tyler, who fumbled 4.14% of the time on his rushes and receptions. Or Eric Dickerson, who fumbled 2.38% of the time. Or Earl Campbell at 1.86%. Or Walter Payton, for crying out loud, at 1.99%. Peterson is roundly criticized for fumbling at essentially the same rate as Walter Payton, who was rarely described as a fumbler. Running back fumbles have decreased over time, and dramatically so.

Quarterbacks, on the other hand, appear to be going the opposite direction. The 32 older QBs scored at an average of 1.60. Using the same formula, the more recent QBs scored an average of 1.71. Is this down to an expanded use of the shotgun? Bigger defensive players who hit harder? Defensive players going for the sack more often? A loss of fundamentals in protecting the football? I don't know, but the numbers, while not huge, appear to be real.

EDIT LONG AFTER THE FACT: It appears that this shift is the result of a bookkeeping change. Fumbles on handoffs used to be charged to running backs, and are now more sensibly charged to quarterbacks, who after all, were the last people to actually have control of the ball. I'm still trying to find out when this shift happened, though I'm betting sometime in the early to mid 1980s.