Eagles quarterback Michael Vick tried to cure his fumble-itis before facing the Lions by every day carrying a football with him all day to lunch, to meetings and beyond. It didn’t work.

 The Lions are not taking that approach with Mikel Leshoure who has fumbled twice in recent games including a costly red zone cough-up on Monday night at Chicago.

 “We’re always talking about ‘Don’t take an inch for granted.’ But you can’t do it at the expense of ball security. He was a very ball-secure player in college. He’s been out for a while, whatever it was, a year out of contact,’’ Lions offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said.

 “You’ve got missing, really missing pretty much the entire training camp, except for maybe the last part of it. Those are the things that you take for granted and you find out and say ‘Hey, listen, we’ve got to make sure that we’re securing that ball,’ and both of our fumbles were extra-effort fumbles,’’ Linehan added.

Running back Joique Bell also fumbled at the 1-yard line trying to go for the extra few inches on a second down.

 “You put the ball on the ground, it’s a self-inflicted wound and it takes points off the board and both of those fumbles were in scoring position, so never a good time, but it’s always pretty critical when you take away that opportunity,’’ Linehan said. 

“So, we’d like to pretty much get that off of our radar at this point. Last year we were a very good ball secure team, we didn’t have a lot of fumbles,’’ he added.

 Each of those fumbles prevented a possible game-winning touchdown.

  (Follow @PaulaPasche on Twitter.)