Much has been made of Retzlaff's turnovers from last year and how Aaron Roderick challenged him. He was then credited with going through spring with no INTs and only one turnover in fall camp. The problem with that, is Retzlaff's fumbles more than he throws INTs though we are lucky enough to recover some of those, and the fumbles are something he still has not fixed. We should have seen this coming, however, because he's being consistent with who has has been all along.

At BYU in 6 games, Retzlaff has 9 fumbles (4 lost) and 5 INTs. That's 9 TOs with opportunities for 5 more. (He has 8 TD passes. 3 of those came against SIU though, so against P4 opponents, he has a 1-1 TD-INT ratio to go with and average of 1.5 fumbles per game (0.67 lost.)

If you look at his JC stats, at Golden West, he had 2 INTs and 3 fumbles (1 lost) in six games. (Note there were two team fumbles at Golden West where I don't know if they should have been attributed to Retzlaff or someone else, but they lost both of those.) At Riverside, he had 14 INTs and 9 fumbles (6 lost) in 13 games. So he averaged more than 0.84 INTs and 0.63 fumbles (0.37 lost) per game during his JC career with those averages climbing to 1.08 INTs and 0.69 fumbles (0.46 lost) per games in his last JC year. Lest you just think this is because of a single bad game, the longest Retzlaff has ever gone without a fumble is 3 games. He has only managed to do that twice in his JC career. In 25 career games he has 14 with at least one fumble.

At BYU, he managed to start off with two fumble-free games, but then Oklahoma realized he's fumble prone. Everyone remembers the pick six, but he had 4 fumbles in that game and we lost two. Since then, he has not had a single game without a fumble, a 4 game streak. So at BYU, he averages 0.83 INTs and 1.5 fumbles (0.67 lost) per game. If you remove our FCS opponent, those averages climb to 1 INT and 1.6 fumbles (0.8 lost) per game. (Those are astounding averages.)

People can change and get better. Tiki Barber is probably the most famous example of someone who was fumble-prone but managed to correct it, but until he does, it will continue to be a major source of problems for our team and it will be exactly who he is and has been. I haven't yet found anyone who is turning it over at this rate who has managed to keep their job. I'll keep looking.