Frank Gore on fumble: 'I’m better than that. I can’t let that happen'

After a lengthy phone call with someone surely without answers, Frank Gore arched back in a folding chair and clutched his head.

How did that ball, this game and maybe this season slip away at the doorstep of a touchdown midway through Monday night’s third quarter?

“(It) just came out of my hands; it slipped out,” Gore said in a quiet voice in a depressed Indianapolis Colts locker room after a 20-7 loss to the New York Jets at Lucas Oil Stadium. “I messed up.”

The next words were difficult for the 11-year NFL running back to say.

“I’m better than that,” he said. “I can’t let that happen.”

In a game full of botched plays, Gore coughing up the ball on third down at the 1 altered the rest of the night. That was the first of two missed opportunities for possible touchdowns.

Instead, Darrelle Revis recovered the fumble in the end zone for a Jets touchback.

“That would have been a big touchdown,” Gore said. “The game would have went differently if I would have just went in and ran into the end zone.”

The Colts (0-2) had five turnovers: Three interceptions, two fumbles. They also had 11 penalties. That mess came on the heels of last week’s 27-14 loss at Buffalo.

The offense, hyped as potent – remember when Andrew Luck was touted as the NFL’s leading MVP candidate? – has gone to consecutive halftimes scoreless for the first time since 1997.

“The fumble, the penalties, the turnovers (pause) we’re driving the ball, you know?” Gore said. “Oh, man, (we) just keep hurting ourselves.

“If you want to win in this league you can’t fumble, you can’t (have) penalties, turnovers. You can’t do that in this league. The last two weeks that’s what’s really been hurting. Everybody said the same, ‘We’ve got to stop beating ourselves.’”


(indystar.com)