Don't Bench me Bro!

Being a college or NFL football coach has to get really stressful.  Your whole career is controlled by young kids playing a game.  Your career has a three-year shelf-life unless you are really good.  Even Mark Richt at Georgia gets second guessed all the time even though he has won 9 or 10 games at least for a thousand years now.  A few bad bounces and you go from hero to fired.  One of the easiest ways to lose games in any level of football is turnovers. 

Outside of QBs, the main culprits of this are when a running back fumbles because they touch the ball much more often than anyone else. You can teach guys how to hold the ball correctly and other techniques to prevent fumbling, and you can even go to extremes to stress how important it is to hold onto the ball, but sometimes fumbles happen.  That is when some coaches go off the rails and get mad at their players and sometimes even bench them for fumbling.  We have seen this in two big cases this year - Stephen Ridley for the Patriots and David Wilson for the Giants.  My question for the coaches is this: Do you think they want to fumble?  Do you think they weren't actively trying not to fumble?  They know how important every game is.  They get paid on their performance just like you except no one else can bail them out.  I would argue fumbling hurts the player much much more than the coach.  If that is the case and the player knows fumbling cannot continue to happen then why would the coaches bench their best players?  It makes no sense.  Ridley and Wilson are clearly the most talented and explosive backs on their teams.  By not using them coaches are hurting their teams' chances of winning.  The craziest part is they really haven't even failed yet - they haven't had time to!  They both got benched after one or two fumbles and then the coach assumes that it will continue.  Why not find out at least, it might be an aberration.  If they fumbled in the middle of the year you wouldn't bench them.  Makes no sense. 

So coaches, play your best players and if the turnovers get out of hand then bench the guy.  Until then, enjoy the good runs.  (I wrote this because I have both Ridley and Wilson on my fantasy team and it is killing me.)

"Butts - the number one cause of fumbles by idiots."