Kevin Faulk tells Stevan Ridley to ‘take care of that funk’
By Mike Dyce
New England Patriots running back Stevan Ridley is having a tough time hanging on to the ball recently. Ridley has fumbled in three straight games and four times all season. Ridley reached out to a former Patriots running back who overcame a similar fumbling problem, Kevin Faulk
Faulk lost six fumbles in his first two season with the Patriots. In 2003, he fumbled four times like Ridley has this season. Faulk also went five years with out fumbling, so he has an understanding of Ridley’s situation and how to overcome it.
“It was good,” Faulk told Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald. “I can’t tell you about the conversation, but I can tell you as a person who has been in the situation, I just try to get him a better understanding of where he was as far as what he needs to do going forward. Hopefully something I said would be something that would be familiar to him that he would recognize what he needs to do.”
“It was just a fact of me understanding who I was as a runner, what I had to change in order to maintain [the ball],” Faulk said. “I can tell you one thing. After a while, I never switched the ball. I always kept the ball in my left hand. That was just one thing, but there are a lot of different things that just take practice and practice. Not just practice on the field, but it takes practice off the field, not thinking about it, not mentally getting yourself disturbed about it. . . .
“Like I told him, you really have to be mentally in tune. Some things may have to change. I’m not saying everything has to change, but something has to change because obviously that something is happening. We can say it’s a funk, but we still have to pay attention to that funk and take care of that funk.”