Stevie Johson’s fumble late in the fourth quarter cost the Bills 42% worth of win probability against the Falcons, according to Brian Burke’s win probability calculator. Based on where he caught the ball and the time remaining, the Bills had a 89% chance to win the game. The play didn’t directly lead to an Atlanta win, but it eliminated Buffalo’s chance to win before overtime (a 50/50 proposition).
Before Sunday, just 19 turnovers had occurred inside the opponent’s half of the field with less than two minutes to go in the game. The offense was ahead, tied, or behind just just one score nine times. Only 28 turnovers were committed in the same situation in 2012. Thirteen of those games were close enough for the offense to win. Turnovers when a driving team is close to winning the game late happens in about 5% of the games in a regular season.
But despite how infrequent these turnovers happen, it really, really stinks when it happens to your team. Johnson didn’t sound especially frustrated in his post-game interviews, leading to a renewed call to cut ties with the highest paid player on the offense (Mario Williams, Jairus Byrd, and Kyle Williams are the only Bills with higher cap hits than Johnson this season).
Johnson has been Buffalo’s best receiver (in terms of yardage and receptions, at least) since 2010. He’s caught 55.4% of the passes thrown to him since 2010 and the Bills gained an average of 7.2 yards on passes his way. The knock on Johnson, however, is that he isn’t “clutch” and fails at the biggest moments late in the game.
Since 2010, Johnson has been targeted 26 times in the last two minutes of a game. He’s caught just 38.5% of those passes and his average yards per target drops to 4.1 yards. That’s a really big drop.
All receivers in 2013 have faced just a 2.5% drop in catch rate in the last two minutes of a game. Their yards per target are literally unchanged (0.06 drop). All targets (including tight ends and running backs) have almost the same catch rates and yards per target in all plays and late game situations. So Johnson must be a choke artist, right?
Not really. Because he has just 26 targets in last game situations, his real catch rate in those circumstances is subject to a lot of random variation. Assuming the 26 target sample size is large enough to draw any conclusions from, Johnson’s late game catch rate could be as high as 57.6%.
So what about fumbles after a catch? The Bills did it twice late in the game, and those turnovers basically led to Buffalo’s loss.
Fumbles after a catch have occurred 116 times out of the 7,832 catches (before Sunday) in 2013. The Bills were one of five teams to have a league-leading six fumbles after a catch, but hadn’t had the misfortune of it happening twice in one game. Yet.
Stevie Johnson’s late game stats are likely a result of some bad luck and he probably isn’t a “choker.” The two late game fumbles were also very unlucky. Given the 2013 fumble after a catch rate, the chance of Buffalo fumbling and losing possession on back to back catches is between 0.015 and 0.031%. Random bad luck strikes the Bills again. It hurts, but that’s all it is.
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