Turnovers are a monkey wrench that can derail the best laid handicapping plans or analytical assessments. Because that happens a fair amount of the time in college football, you’ll often hear variations of “turnovers are random,” “turnovers are more about luck than anything else,” and “you can’t handicap turnovers.”

In terms of the exact specifics, it’s true that you can’t handicap when and where turnovers are going to happen. But, that’s also true for any other stat! You can’t know before a game starts exactly when Ohio State will score its touchdowns, or what yard line a Heisman Trophy candidate will be throwing his touchdown passes from. But, that doesn’t mean it’s lucky when Ohio State wins a blowout, or when a quarterback has a big day.

Higher Risk Offenses Usually Equate to More Turnovers

Florida State turned the ball over 32 times last year. That was one of the worst performances in the country. If you watched them play…which was easy to do because they were on TV so often…you saw an overconfident quarterback in Jameis Winston constantly trying to force passes where they didn’t belong. Was it “bad luck” that FSU kept losing the turnover category? Or, was it the downside of hero-ball? Clearly, FSU kept attempting high-risk plays. Their giveaways were a reflection of those risks.

Georgia Southern only turned the ball over 12 times last year. Exactly once per game. Were they just way luckier than Florida State? No, Georgia Southern runs a relatively safe option attack that protects the ball. In fact, they ran the ball on 81% of their plays last season! Low risk attacks lose the ball less often as a general rule…which means turnovers can’t be all luck!

Aggressive Defenses Usually Equate to More Takeaways

To this point, we’ve only talked about offensive influences on turnovers. What about defense?

TCU had 40 takeaways last year, thanks to an aggressive defense that was constantly dealing with opponents who were in desperation mode playing from behind. That’s a harmonic convergence for a high takeaway count. Defensive guru as head coach…great athletes on defense…opponents who can only use high-risk/high-reward to stay in the game. Not a convergence of luck influences…but a convergence of real-world dynamics.

Michigan had 8 takeaways last year. The other side of the coin. A program stuck in the doldrums that played passively on defense with one of the most disappointing collection of athletes the program had ever seen. Most opponents could move the ball easily against the Wolverines even with safe attacks.

Likely Turnover Scenarios

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t any luck involved when it comes to turnovers. Maybe TCU only “deserved” 32 takeaways and they got 40. Maybe Michigan “should” have had 14 but the ball didn’t bounce their way on fumbles.  But, there were still meaningful differences in schematics, athletes, and the game situations that confronted their opponents.

With this in mind, smart handicappers will consider likely turnover scenarios when studying an upcoming matchup. It’s not enough to look at yardage averages. In fact, yardage can give you a false read because high-risk/high-reward often yields impressive offensive totals. You don’t want to lay points with a team that’s likely to set up cheap opposition points with giveaways. You’ll just lose a shootout (and probably blame bad turnover luck!).

On the other side of the coin, “grinders” who play smart but don’t rack up huge yardage totals can be great bets as underdogs. Because they’re not giving the ball away, they can hang tough for 60 full minutes and maybe spring an upset.

Some of you handicap the whole college board. Others prefer to focus on the local conference of interest. Either way, it will help your handicapping process in the 2015 season if you take the following steps.

• Review last year’s turnover counts on offense and defense

• Evaluate the coaching staffs for risk/reward preferences on both sides of the ball

• Evaluate turnover likelihood for returning starting quarterbacks based on last year

• Make reasonable estimates of turnover likelihood for new starting quarterbacks

• Look at defensive returning starters and team histories to make reasonable estimates for a defensive “turnovers forced” outlook

Analytics isn’t at the point now, nor will ever be at the point where it can predict exactly how many turnovers will happen in a game. But, as in meteorology, you can see when storms are brewing. You can see when likelihoods are very high or very low for turnover issues. Over time, that ability will help you become a better handicapper and bettor.

Summary

In short:

• Invest in productive low-risk offenses at value prices when they face passive defenses, or defenses that match up badly against that offense’s strength (ie, take run-heavy offenses vs. poor run defenses, take teams who pass out of the spread vs. soft pass defenses).

• Invest in aggressive defenses at value prices when they face turnover prone offenses that are poorly suited to high risk football.

• Fade high risk offenses when they’re matched up against turnover forcing defenses, or are playing in weather conditions that could exacerbate their turnover tendencies (rain, snow, wind).

• Fade passive defenses when they’re matched up against high octane offenses, particularly in conditions that could amplify the strengths of those offenses (fast artificial turf, hot temperatures that could wear down a passive defense even more).

There are some elements of luck involved in turnovers…but so much ISN’T luck that you need to have the realities on your radar as you prepare for the coming handicapping challenges.

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Jeff Fogle is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. He writes about college football analytics for The Saturday Edge. He also writes about college and pro football, college and pro basketball, and MLB on his blog StatIntelligence. You can follow Jeff on Twitter @JeffFogle.

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