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Melvin Gordon trains with an idol to help fumbling issues

Melvin Gordon put the ball on the ground 6 times last year, so he reached out to one of his idols for help.

By Matthew Stanley
John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports

Melvin Gordon III had a less than ideal rookie season. Yes, the blocking he had to deal with was pretty bad, but he did a lot of things wrong as well. The worst of those was his ball security.

Gordon wound up with six fumbles last year, 5 of them occurring during his 184 rush attempts. Turnovers change the pace of games and turning it over this many times definitely aided in adding losses to the Chargers' record. Not only that, but the high rate of fumbles also made head ball coach Mike McCoy lose confidence in the rookie back and limited his red zone opportunities, which is part of the reason Gordon ended the season with 0 touchdowns to his name.

MGIII knows he needs to do better, and according to ESPN's Ben Goessling, he reached out to one of his idols for help.

Gordon called up Adrian Peterson, and the two have spent some time this offseason working out together. AP was also looking to brush up on his ball security.

They are training with James Cooper, who helped AP remedy his fumbling ways early in his career. In AP's first three seasons he had 19 fumbles. After spending an offseason training with Cooper after his third year, AP only had 8 in the next four seasons combined. Then when Peterson missed the entire 2014 season, he focused so much on rehabbing his knee that the fumbles found him again last season when he, like Gordon, had six fumbles.

Another reason this could spell good news for MGIII is Cooper is also who helped AP rehab after his knee injury and return to dominant form. If Gordon improves on his ball security AND comes into the season confident in his knee, he should start showing all of us what Tom Telesco and crew saw in him that warranted trading up in the 1st round to grab him a year ago.

Hopefully, Cooper can work the same magic on Gordon that he did on Peterson.

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