Fumble Rate Among Cowboys Running Backs

Turnovers will drive any fan crazy, but they are especially aggravating in close games or games that result in a loss. We often hear Jason Garrett say line one is ball protection, but the Cowboys were 12th place (tied) with 22 fumbles. This is an area the Cowboys will need to continue to clean up the coming season if they want to contend for a championship.

One of the biggest gripes, including from me, were the fumbles that DeMarco Murray had last season. What really irked fans were the consecutive times Murray was fumbling. Murray had 5 fumbles during the regular season, 4 of which came within the first 8 games of the year, so it was a bad habit which he broke out of thankfully. He had a key fumble in the divisional round which some saw as the turning point for the Packers victory — the momentum shifted.

So, we let Murray take his services to Philadelphia and we hope he’ll return to his fumbling ways obviously, but what about our current stable of backs, do we have any habitual fumblers on this team right now?

Let’s take a look at our current running backs on the team:

• Darren McFadden
• Joseph Randle
• Lance Dunbar
• Ryan Williams

Right now there are plenty of healthy discussions about which running back will actually become the primary back, and that’s something that will work itself out during the preseason.

Now what I want to look at are the NFL career fumble rates:

Darren McFadden 61.1

Joseph Randle 52.5

Lance Dunbar 40.0

Ryan Williams 29.0

The higher the number, the better. You’ll notice McFadden has been fumbling about once every 61.1 carries and Ryan Williams has the worst fumble rate of 29.0

I wanted to dig deeper on the backs since most have had limited production in the NFL, so I took a look at their fumble rates in college, and here are those numbers:

McFadden 15 fumbles / 325 / 2007
McFadden 4 fumbles / 284 / 2006
McFadden 4fumbles / 176 / 2005
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23 fumbles 785 = 34.1

Randle 1 fumble / 82 / 2010
Randle 4 fumbles / 208 / 2011
Randle 2 fumbles / 274 / 2012
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7 fumbles = 80.6

Dunbar 2 fumbles / 39 / 2008
Dunbar 5 fumbles / 200 / 2009
Dunbar 7 fumbles / 274 / 2010
Dunbar 3 fumbles / 269 / 2011
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17 fumbles = 46.0

Williams 5 fumbles / 293 / 2009
Williams 1 fumble / 110 / 2010
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6 fumbles = 67.2

Immediately you’ll notice McFadden’s number is the lowest of the group. But as we know in this exercise, the lower the number the worst; and, this is one reason scouts and GMs had concerns with his transition to the NFL, he had a label of being a fumbler coming out of Arkansas. McFadden actually continued to fumble quite a bit his first years with the Raiders, but he has curtailed the fumbling issue quite a bit, that’s why you see his overall NFL fumble rate of 61.1 as the best among the other backs on our team right now.

The other number that leaps off the page are Randle’s numbers. His fumble rate was the lowest, only fumbling once every 80.6 carries. What’s promising about Randle is that his limited NFL numbers are relatively good coming in second behind McFadden, so to me, he has the most promise at being consistent. Randle has a big opportunity to take this team to the next level if he can continue to show his quickness and shifty running without fumbling and bumbling the ball like Murray did last season.

Williams has had an interesting football career stretching back to his short career at Virginia Tech, so his numbers are skewed here in my opinion, and that’s what many scouts and GMs had trouble grasping. No one could pinpoint what kind of player Williams would become in the pros. He had a breakout freshman year and then struggled his sophomore year with nagging hamstring injuries. We now know that Williams has the injury prone label hovering over him with a litany of injuries that derailed his career at Arizona dating as far back as college.

Dunbar’s numbers in college were not good, way too many fumbles. You have to wonder if he has cleaned that up or not. I don’t think we have to worry too much about Dunbar as he has seen limited action, and mainly utilized as a screen pass catcher more than a traditional running back. If Dunbar can’t secure a special teams return role, I could see some roster churning with the bottom half of the current backs on the roster.

To me, these fumble rates exhibit why McFadden and Randle will be the undisputed one-two punch in the Cowboys backfield this year.