Thorman’s Snaps and Pace: Week 16

Welcome to the Week 16 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.

We followed up the season’s highest-scoring week (49.9 per game) with another banger (49.3) in which every team was back in action for the stretch run. Week 15 featured the largest main slate of the season with 13 games. A pair of Saturday games thin this week’s slate. Next week’s is further diminished with three more invading Christmas. The fantasy playoffs are raging, injuries are piling up like holiday credit card debt, and there’s much to get to — so let’s dive right 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 | One Up, One Down | Slow-Paced Slogs | Pace Notes

Up In Pace

Atlanta Falcons at Arizona Cardinals

Nothing stops this train — or in the Cardinals’ case, this garbage truck. With seven straight failed comebacks’ worth of frantic late-game flailing, and Jacoby Brissett’s 48.8 dropbacks per start filling up box scores, no one has come from behind with such volume since Peter North. The scariest factor for projecting an up-pace outcome here is that we might actually have a close contest (ATL -2.5). Only a Week 9 win over the Cowboys presented Arizona with a leading game script, and Dallas did enough to drive the pace while producing 130 combined snaps. Cardinals games still lead the league in play volume. Their contests are top 10 in total points both on the season (49.3) and over the past month (52.5). No offense throws at a higher rate during neutral situations this year (63%) or during the last four weeks (67%). At this stage, there’s little left to say except “get aboard,” after Brissett, Trey McBride, and Michael Wilson got there yet again despite facing the league’s top defense by EPA per play surrendered. The only conceivable pothole is a positive game script enticing a run-heavier plan that compounds what has, to this point, been an inconsequentially middling neutral pace. Yet, with Bam Knight joining James Conner and Trey Benson among Cardinals backfield memories, there’s no one left to reasonably feed.

The Falcons have two backfield horses to feed, and they almost certainly will feature prominently on Sunday. Arizona’s defense ranks 24th in rushing success rate, so as long as Atlanta remains in the game, they should remain able to run. Of course, the Cardinals’ defense ranks even worse in passing success rate — 31st — so it really is a dealer’s-choice situation for opposing offenses. The Falcons just turned in the seventh-highest neutral pass rate of Week 15 (63%) and their highest PROE since Michael Penix Jr. was still starting six weeks ago. Considering they averaged 8.1 yards per throw — albeit against the pass-funnel Bucs — there’s at least a chance they don’t swing fully back to the ground. Getting Drake London back to join kingmaker Kyle Pitts would help. Falcons games have been more voluminous since Kirk Cousins took over, ranking sixth in combined snaps (127.5) after sitting 24th through 11 weeks (120.1). Atlanta also just posted its fastest neutral pace over expected with Cousins at the helm this year. A pair of condensed offenses meeting indoors, and Arizona’s propensity for wild end-game stat-padding, puts the fantasy Falcons back on the menu.