The Tampa Bay Buccaneers fumble the ball. A lot. Nick Timiraos in some desperate attempt to explain the silliness that is DeflateGate created a chart based on the amount of fumbles per play since 2010. And boy, do the Bucs look bad.
Could deflated balls explain why the Patriots share of fumbles to plays run is off the charts? http://t.co/fsxUCReLow pic.twitter.com/3Ko2QyE1TU
— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) January 23, 2015
Only three teams fumbled more often than the Bucs on a per-play basis over the past four years. That's despite the fact that the Bucs ranked fifth and ninth in fumbles lost under Greg Schiano -- say what you want of that disciplinarian, he did get people to stop fumbling, somehow.
Of course, this is a statistic that is heavily influenced by luck. The Bucs ranked ninth in the NFL with nine fumbles lost in 2013, while their 13 fumbles in 2014 saw them ranked 25th -- a pretty huge fall for a fairly modest increase in lost fumbles -- but then total number of fumbles did jump up from 18 to 29.
All of this is fairly easy to explain, though: quarterbacks fumble more than any other position, by a rather huge margin. And mostly, they fumble when they hold on to the football and struggle to sense pressure. Just so happens that the Bucs have been starting players who do just that over the past half decade. Maybe it's time to start changing that?