Thorman’s Snaps and Pace: Week 10

Welcome to the Week 10 edition of Snaps & Pace — winner of the 2024 FSWA Best Football Series — where we examine trends in play volume and game pace. It is meant to be a 30,000-foot view of upcoming contests, while identifying main-slate matchups that will — and will not — be played on fertile fantasy soil. For a primer on why this is important, click here.

The 10-game main slate features a few juicy projected totals but is missing our favorite piñata defenses. Three of the league’s four worst are licking wounds this week, as the Bengals, Cowboys, and Titans are on bye. They rank 32nd, 31st, and 29th in points per snap allowed, respectively. They will be missed.

The Chiefs are also enjoying a week off, deleting a second offense from the slate that ranks top five in EPA per play — with the Cowboys being the other. The Bengals rank first since Joe Flacco hit town. We’ll forget the Titans.

We are also through the trade deadline and into the stretch run. Teams have pushed in their chips, both bravely and foolishly. You can guess which GM-for-life did the latter.

With that, and the incessant erosion of injury, team profiles are shifting.

An offense making regular appearances in Up In Pace can blink and find itself among the Slogs thanks to a quarterback change, trades, and a gutted offensive line. Sometimes shifts are not as decisive, and more information is needed — as we’ll touch on with a few offenses below in the Pace Notes.

Half the hay is already in the barn. The weather and clocks have turned. Let’s hurry up and dive in.

“Situation neutral” is meant to provide context and refers to plays while the game is within seven points during the first three quarters (minus the final two minutes of the first half). Neutral Pace (average play-clock seconds used), Neutral Pace Over Expected (POE), and Pass Rate Over Expected (PROE) are based on neutral game script and are provided by our data science team.

Up In Pace | Slow-Paced Slogs | Pace Notes

Up In Pace

New York Giants at Chicago Bears

If the Cowboys and Bengals’ defenses weren’t such screaming disasters, more fans would notice how often the Giants and Bears throw up on themselves. This week, we’ll take advantage of them puking on each other. The Giants’ first game without rhinoback Cam Skattebo saw their usual run-leaning approach pivot to a neutral PROE and their highest raw pass rate since Week 1 (70%). New York’s offense also operated at the fastest neutral pace over expected of the week (+3.8) and delivered its, by far, highest neutral no-huddle rate of the season (43%). While they could only muster 179 passing yards at 5.1 yards per attempt, at least the Giants aired it out and operated quickly. Only the Saints have played at a faster pace this season, and New York’s typically voluminous games rank third in combined snaps. Thanks largely to a cratering defense ranked third worst in EPA per play allowed, Giants contests are also top 10 in total points (49.6) — with a juicy 58-point average over the past four weeks (third). Bottom 12 in pressure rate with a secondary that can’t cover a five-dollar check, New York coughs up the eighth-highest opponent explosive play rate (12%).