Arrowsmith's Eye on Football: Turnovers = Losses
By Larry Stone December 31, 2001

You would think by week 16 the teams would have sorted themselves out, right? Good teams up top....bad teams to the side. Favorites take care of their business. Talented teams play hard and win, teams with lesser talents plan for the draft.

Welcome to the NFL.

12 hours after we watched it unfold, the scores remain the same.

Cincinnati 26 Pittsburgh 23
Dallas 27 San Francisco 21
Buffalo 14 New York Jets 9
Denver 23 Oakland 17
Cleveland 41 Tennessee 38
Washington 40 New Orleans 10

Six games where the team that appeared to be the more talented fell. After all, the losers in these games had a collective record of 56-28 coming into Sunday. The winners stood 29-55. Moreover, the Steelers and 49'ers were getting lots of Super Bowl talk as teams that might end up in New Orleans.

Interestingly enough, one commonality between these games may explain the reason for the upsets: turnovers.

The losing teams tallied 19 turnovers while the winning teams turned the ball over just six times. That's more than three times as many turnovers committed by the favored team.

Sunday proves again what those of us who are relatively new to the daily workings of the NFL have been told repeatedly the last five years: the difference between the best teams in the NFL and the worst teams is a couple of players or a couple of plays.

When a better team turns the ball over to a worse team, it evens the field. It's like a father giving his eight-year old son a six-point lead in a basketball game to ten. The son needs just four points to win. A turnover can shorten the field, by allowing an opponent to get points without driving 70-plus yards.

Even better for the underdog when a turnover directly leads to points, as was the case with the Bengals' fumble return for a touchdown against Pittsburgh. Again, you are allowing the opposition to tally points without being forced to march the football down the field.

Saying that turnovers proved to be the difference in winning or losing in each of the six games Sunday offers too simple an answer. We saw firsthand that the Titans defense held the Browns to just three points off the two Titans turnovers. Other things like tackling and focus can and do allow underdogs to get the win.

Still, holding on to the football has been, is, and will continue to be one of the key components to winning football games, especially when the fine-line between winning and losing remains so narrow.

Sunday proved that lesson once again.