Injuries aside, the Dallas Cowboys are clearly still high on running back DeMarco Murray, but a slight touch of fumble-itis in his second NFL season has the Dallas staff looking to emphasize the importance of ball control with the Oklahoma product.
“Carry it high, and your wrist is above your elbow, and you carry it tight to your body,” head coach Jason Garrett said this week, per the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “There’s five points of contact you need to have when you carry the football.
“One of the things we try to emphasize, every play, regardless of what it is, it’s an opportunity for you to develop a habit to become the player you are. If you’re in a walk-through situation and you’re a running back on our team, you’re expected to carry it high and tight. We don’t want to carry it parallel or low and loose. That results in fumbles.”
Granted, over two seasons in the league, Murray has only coughed it up four times--once in his rookie year and thrice in his sophomore year--but two of those three fumbles in 2012 were costly. One came in the Cowboys’ red zone against Pittsburgh in Week 15 and another came at the Cowboys’ own three-yard line the week after that, a play that set the Saints up for an easy touchdown.
“He’s going to carry the ball a lot for our us,” Garrett said. “It’s not his ball. It’s our ball. It’s real important that he understands that.”
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