"We had a couple years in a row where our takeaways had been really down," said Sean McDermott, the secondary coach then and the defensive coordinator now. "We sat around the table one day, and Jim had kind of wanted to brainstorm, and I just said, 'Why don't we treat every loose ball like it's a fumble?' I don't know where I got the idea from."
Wherever it came from, it was a winner in Johnson's mind. At the start of training camp last season, the defensive players were ordered to swarm to all loose footballs, including incomplete passes. It looked awkward.
"I remember when we first put it in, the guys hated it," safety Quintin Mikell said. "Pick the ball up and run? But you see after that point, last year we started getting more turnovers. And this year we really stressed it, and you see what's happening. I do think it comes from that."
It's so much a part of the routine that McDermott said he had watched the tape of last Sunday's win over San Francisco and had seen one of his linemen try to pick up an incomplete pass and run with it during the 49ers' first offensive series.
"That's kind of that muscle memory - Pavlov's dog-trained instinct," McDermott said.
It's obviously working. A year ago, the Eagles' takeaway total improved to 29. Going into today's game against the Denver Broncos, the total is 36, just one behind the league-leading New Orleans Saints.
The turnovers have led to 119 points, including four defensive touchdowns.
McDermott isn't so naive to think that his pounce-on-the-football practice technique is the sole reason for the increase, but rest assured that the philosophy will continue for the foreseeable future.
