(Written by kencraw)

Ragnarok over at The California Golden blogs has a good post about turnovers and winning percentage. Everything he says, minus a portion of his conclusion, is dead on accurate. There’s no better way to lose a game than turning of the ball and no better way to win a game that protecting it well. But Ragnarok makes a conclusion from it that I wouldn’t (the part in bold):

Still, despite the last two games, Cal still leads the Pac-10 with 18 turnovers recovered and a +7 turnover margin, and their 11 turnovers given up is tied for the fewest in the conference with Oregon, Arizona State, and Stanford. (Really? Stanford leads the conference in something?) This should give us hope going forward that Cal remains a team that is both able to take care of the ball on offense and create takeaways on defense. If this is indeed the case, I like the Bears chances to win Pac-10 games down the stretch (especially against USC, which has coughed up the ball 17 times this season and has a -4 turnover margin).

To be clear about what I’m saying, I completely agree that I think Cal has a big upside in that it has a history of taking care of the football and if they can get back to that trend, the Bears have a great shot at absolutely dominanting the majority of their remaining games. What I don’t agree about is that USC is vulnerable because of their past bad turnover performance.

While I completely understand his perspective, the way I see it, the teams with a high turnover ratio are the ones to fear, not the ones to be confident about. In my view of the world turnovers are mistakes more than 90% of the time, instead of being induced by good defenses (although there is no doubt that the best defenses find a way to force them) or even overall weakness of the team making the mistakes. Mistakes can be corrected much easier than an undersized offensive line or poor conditioning. Running backs can be taught to better hold onto the ball. Quarterbacks can be taught to avoid bad throwing situations. It’s much harder to tell a player to “run faster!” As such, a team that has losses because of turnovers is a team that if they clean up their act may have the potential to be VERY strong.

As evidence of this I present to you a quote from my Rivals Oregon State preview:

The other meaningful statistic is the 3.8 turnovers per game the Beavers are giving up. Of course this statistic is a bad one for Oregon State fans, but it should also be a warning to Bears fans that Oregon State could be playing a lot better football without the mistakes. In Oregon State’s other blowout loss outside of UCLA, a non-conference romp by Cincinnati, Oregon State turned the ball over 9 times including 6 interceptions, a fumble and two special teams mistakes including a blocked punt for a touchdown.

There is no question that Oregon State will be unable to win this game if they continue to make mistakes like they did against Cincinnati. However, if they can reduce those mistakes, something that can be more easily fixed in practice than an undersized offensive line or a slow set of defensive backs, the Beavers might just have a shot at upsetting the Bears.

We all know how that turned out…

So for me, when I see that ASU hasn’t turned the ball over much and is winning their games that says to me that they’re more vulnerable than their final results indicate… they’re a few mistakes away from some big upsets but when USC has a horrible turnover ratio it says to me that this a VERY dangerous team if they can get their act together. Said another way, USC is a couple of turnovers away from being undefeated and #1 in the country. That makes me really nervous come November 10th.