GopherSports: Turnover Chart Provides Motivation

BleedGopher

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per GopherSports.com:

Winning the turnover battle is something Fleck has been pushing since day one. That’s why he had the turnover margin chart – which features all 14 teams in the Big Ten – installed in the team meeting room. It’s one of the first things that the team sees every day and it stresses the importance of the ball. After a neutral turnover margin last week, Fleck stressed the need to cause some disruption.

“We dropped two last week that we should have had two more interceptions,” Fleck said. “Those are all the coulda, woulda, shouldas. That's why we kept that chart right there. The difference between really good and elite teams is this much. On the defensive side, it's getting the ball and getting the takeaways.”

Turnovers – like what happened on Saturday night – often turn games around.

“If you can do that, you are going to win a lot of games,” Fleck said. “I showed everybody that statistic when I first got here, when we were 117th in the country in turnover margin, you are one and 11. When you are number one in the country, you are 13 and 0. It is the number one stat in football.”

And after the second week of football, the Gophers are trending in the right direction.

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Go Gophers!!
 

I don't doubt the veracity of that stat. But the question is if it's a controllable stat. I've seen advanced metrics discussions in which turnovers caused seems to be based mostly on luck.

Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't stress its importance. I just don't know if you can will it into your favor.
 

I don't doubt the veracity of that stat. But the question is if it's a controllable stat. I've seen advanced metrics discussions in which turnovers caused seems to be based mostly on luck.

Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't stress its importance. I just don't know if you can will it into your favor.

I think there is some control, at least in giving up turn overs, since you can change your form to help prevent fumbles, train you QB to identify obvious coverage that leads to interceptions, etc.

In terms of recovering turnovers from the other team, I think that's more toward luck, but the more you can put yourself into the situations where you can strip the ball, or be close enough for an interception, the more recoveries you'll have.
 




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