Fumbling not as big an issue as you might think for Williams

By Darin Gantt - daringantt@carolina.rr.com

CHARLOTTE -- If it looks like DeAngelo Williams has a fumbling problem now, it's only because he has been so secure with the ball before.

The Carolina Panthers running back had the signature error of last week's game at New Orleans, a late-game fumble which sealed the game for the Saints. That gave him three fumbles lost this season, triple his total from his first three years in the league.

“We don't want to put a stigma on him,” running back coach Jim Skipper said. “He's a ball player, and he knows he's got to have it.

“In a perfect world, you'd never have any, but it's part of football.”

The fact that Skipper could get through that exchange without saying the word fumble underscores how important ball security is for the Panthers. If you're going to play ball-control, you have to hold onto it, and that's something they work on every day. They incorporate ball-security drills into every practice, and Williams often will do his with a spandex slip-cover on the ball to make it more slippery.

“All the time,” Skipper replied when asked how often it's discussed. “That's an understood thing. That's every time they touch the ball. It's an understood thing. We drill it every day. It's like everything else you do in ball — you practice it every day, you talk about it every day, then you play ball.”

It always seemed like Williams had a handle on that.

He only fumbled twice in his first three seasons, losing just one of those. But this year's three seemed like a hailstorm of mistakes, until you put his work in context.

Among the league's top 10 rushers, he's still near the top in keeping it.

Tennessee's Chris Johnson, who leads the league this year with 959 yards, has coughed it up just twice in 395 career rushes, or once every 197.5 attempts. Williams has five fumbles in his 687 carries, or one every 137.4 attempts.

Only two others in the league's top 10 in rushing yards can boast career rates of more than 100 attempts per fumble (Cincinnati's Cedric Benson at 118.9 and Green Bay's Ryan Grant at 108.2). By contrast, Minnesota superstar Adrian Peterson is nearly three times as likely to drop the ball as Williams, averaging a fumble every 50.9 times he touches it.

Williams was distraught after last week's mistake, but teammates were as quick to rally around him as when Jake Delhomme was throwing picks at a much greater rate earlier this season.

“Some of it's the luck of the draw,” Skipper said. “You've got to hang in there. You're going to get hit different ways. The biggest thing is you've got to protect the football. If you've got it all covered up and protected you've got to play ball. You'll take a jarring hit, things will happen. So you just can't dwell on that. You've got to tuck it, move ahead and think positive.

“It's more physical than it is mental. If you've got a positive attitude, that'll take care of that part. You've got to. And I think things will go right. We've just got to play football.”