Time to turn over a new leaf

There is one big but that is appended to this most surprising Seahawks season.

Actually, I suppose it’s more like 28 little buts.

That’s how many times the Seahawks have turned the ball over this season. Second-most in the league, and for two months, people have been pointing to this as a troubling trend.

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to really dig into the subject of turnovers to look at two things specifically:

1. How unusual is it for a team to win like at the rate Seattle has while committing this volume of turnovers?

2. How have teams that turned the ball over at this rate fared if/when they did make the postseason?

The short answers:

1. Very unusual.

2. It’s not as predictive as you might think.

The second round of the college football playoffs included two absolute blowouts and one all-time classic.

I was at least a little bit disappointed to watch Alabama get absolutely streamrolled by Indiana. This might qualify as a surprise given the glee I’ve taken over each loss that Kalen Deboer has suffered while at Alabama.

I had my eyes on a bigger prize, though: I was imagining how awful Oregon fans would feel if Alabama had beaten Indiana and then defeated the Ducks in the semifinals, meaning that Deboer would be 4-0 against Oregon coach Dan Lanning. I had even though about creating a “family” photo similar to what 49ers fans did following Kyle Shanahan’s success against Sean McVay:

Turns out Alabama got absolutely manhandled by Indiana, which is utterly absurd when you consider the history of those two football programs, and now I’m hoping the Hoosiers can stuff the Ducks in a locker for the second time this season.

The Sugar Bowl was nothing short of incredible, and Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss gave off some “peak Russell Wilson” vibes with his inventiveness in the second half.

One things you’re going to hear debated: Is getting a first-round bye a disadvantage?

Last year, each of the top four seeded teams in the tournament lost in the quarterfinals. Many chalked this up to poor seeding as the rules required the top four seeds to have won their respective conference titles, and neither Arizona State nor Boise State would have been seeded that high without the provision.

However, that little caveat was eliminated this year, and the top four seeds went 1-3 with Indiana being the only one of the top four seeds to advance to the semifinals.

Personally, I think the answer is to give the top four seeds a choice: Do you want to play a first-round game or accept the bye?

Start with the top-seeded team, in this case Indiana. Do you want to play James Madison in Bloomington in the opening round or take a bye? If Indiana accepts the bye, then it’s Ohio State’s turn to choose. Televise the process. Can you imagine the motivation that a coach could draw, telling his team that their opponent decided they’d be easier than doing nothing.

It would be great drama. However, the most likely outcome is that it’s a 16-team tournament going forward with no first-round byes.

OK. It’s time to talk turnovers.

They’re an important stat. Turnover margin has a high correlation with outcome, which is a fancy way of saying that the team that has more takeaways than turnovers usually wins. In fact, turnover margin is a more reliable indicator of outcome than other statistics such as total yardage, time of possession or even sacks allowed.

Does that basic rationale extend to an entire season, though? Are teams that turn the ball over a ton more likely to be losers?

Now you could look at this information from a few different perspectives. 

On the one hand, you could believe that Seattle is living on borrowed time, and its tendency to cough up the football is eventually going to bite the Seahawks firmly in their backside.

Or you could think that Seattle might be an even better team than we think. After all, they’ve managed to win 13 games even while committing all of these turnovers. Even in the three games they’ve lost, they’ve had the ball in the final 5 minutes with a chance to win. If the Seahawks start hanging onto the ball, they might be unstoppable.

Or you could point out that this is such a small sample of information that it’s tough to draw any conclusions. (This is the correct answer.)

So I went a little deeper: I took the turnover information from the past five NFL seasons. I chose this range of information for two reasons:

1. It correlates with the expansion of a 14-team playoff format.

2. It was manageable for a one-week research project.

The most turnovers any team committed in one of the previous five seasons was the 2023 Cleveland Browns, who turned it over 37 times (and made the playoffs by the way). The mark for fewest turnovers were last year’s Buffalo Bills, who committed only 8.

The bulk of teams committed somewhere between 14 and 22 turnovers in a given season.

Question 1: Are teams that commit more turnovers less likely it is to be successful? 

Short answer: Of course.

At the most basic level, a turnover indicates a possession that did not produce points. Turnovers can also cost a team field position. Finally, turnovers often correlate with playing from behind because a team that is trailing its opponent is more prone to taking chances, especially late in the game.

So I looked at all teams who committed 20 or more turnovers in a season. Then I sorted that group a little further, separating it into teams that committed 20 to 24 turnovers and those who committed 25 or more.

 If committing an above-average amount of turnovers has a negative impact on a team’s overall success, the teams who committed 20 to 24 turnovers should be more successful than those who committed 25 or more.

This is in fact what I found:

Question 2: How surprising is it that Seattle has won 13 games given the number of turnovers it has committed?

Short answer: Pretty surprising.

Over the past five seasons, there have been 24 teams that committed 28 or more turnovers over the course of the regular season. Only four of those teams finished with a winning record. None of those teams won as many games as the Seahawks have.

The 2022 Buffalo Bills came close. They won 13 games while committing 27 turnovers in the 16 games they played, their Monday Night game against Cincinnati never being completed.

In 2023, the Bills, Eagles and Chiefs each finished with 11 victories while committing 28 turnovers. The Chiefs went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

Question 3: Are the teams who make the playoffs in spite of their turnover tendency doomed to quick exits? 

Short answer: Not necessarily.

I already mentioned the 2023 Chiefs, who won the Super Bowl after committing 28 turnovers in the regular season. The 2021 Chiefs reached the AFC Championship Game after committing 25 turnovers in the regular season.

Now the Chiefs also have Patrick Mahomes as their quarterback. And the Bills — who won 13 games while committing 27 turnovers in 2022 — had Josh Allen.

And now we’re staring face-to-face at the thing that makes turnovers so tricky to analyze: They depend on the quarterback more than any other player.

On the one hand, it’s not surprising. The quarterback is the guy who’s in charge of throwing the ball and therefore at risk of being picked off. He’s also the one who’s most liable to fumble simply because he’s the one who’s most likely to be hit while he’s not expecting it.

And there are quarterbacks like Allen and Mahomes whose turnovers are more than offset by the big plays that they also make.

Sam Darnold is responsible for the majority of Seattle’s turnovers. He’s also been the triggerman on what was one of the league’s better big-play offenses over the first half of the season.

Can Seattle live with the mistakes that have come? So far they have. But the playoffs are a different animal for two reasons:

1. The level of competition goes up;

2. The margin for error goes down.

Question 4: Are regular-season turnover rates predictive of postseason success?

Short answer: I need to do more research.

The data from the past five years, however, doesn’t provide any reason to think so.

Let’s go back to those teams who committed 20 or more turnovers in a given season, which I divided into two groups.

Now let’s add another category for postseason winning percentage:

The teams that committed more turnovers in the regular season didn’t fare as well, but the gap was not as great as it was in regular-season winning percentage.

We’re also dealing with such a small sample size that you can’t make any conclusions, but it does allow me to form a hypothesis:

Committing a gang of turnovers in the regular season makes it harder for a team to make the playoffs. It doesn’t dictate how it will do once it gets there, though.