Factoid
I'm picking through the fumble numbers today, seeing which quarterbacks and running backs coughed up the ball most frequently -- not only the most fumbles, but the most fumbles per play, most fumbles lost and combined numbers for the last two, three and four years.
Anway, in the 2008 final stats, I notice that Jeff Ghiaciuc, Cincinnati's fourth-year center out of Central Michigan, was charged with four fumbles last year.
That might be an NFL record. No other center last year was charged with more than one fumble.
—Ian Allan
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Posted by ADAM HOLTZ | Feb. 26 at 12:38 PM
If a bad snap can be charged to the center as a fumble, then I would not be surprised to see a center or two charged with 4 fumbles in a season. I am not sure on the rule specifics, though. (Really, though. Otherwise, how could a center get charged with a fumble - recovering one, then dropping it again, perhaps? Can't think of any other way.)
Posted by IAN ALLAN | Feb. 27 at 01:45 AM
Those fumbles are all on snaps -- all four of them. It could be that Cincinnati's official scorer is handling these plays differently than the other 31 statisticians around the league -- looking at the play more closely to determine if the fumble at the snap was the fault of the center or the quarterback. In the league's official handbook for stat keepers, they write that a player can only fumble after the ball has been "properly centered to him". It may be, in the case of the four Ghiaciuc snaps, that the ball just never even got to the quarterback's hands.