Thorman’s Snaps and Pace: Week 18

Welcome to the Week 18 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.

Like last season’s final week, we are going to list all 16 games in order from projected fastest to slowest. If you prefer to read it as a normal edition, assume the top few would fall into Up In Pace and the bottom few are the Slow-Paced Slogs.

To help sort the muddy middle, which would be an arduous task even during a week in which motivation and resting do not figure prominently, a rudimentary Pace Score was created. It factors in a team’s rank in combined plays, total points, neutral pace, PROE, defensive PROE, and explosive play rate — with an emphasis on the previous four weeks.

The scores of each side of every game were added, and voila — a mostly arbitrary, allegedly scientific ordering based on pace. Each is listed below, with the lower the score, the faster the game.

Of course, like a boomer head coach ignoring a geek from the analytics department, I then made manual adjustments to the order based on which teams will rest players, contract incentives, and their motivation. Essentially, just going on feel. Call me Todd Bowles and let’s 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.

Fastest Up Top

Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants (29.8)

Russell Wilson throwing for 450 yards and Malik Nabers scoring twice in Dallas feels like a lifetime ago — or at least since Jerry Jones’ prime gloryholing years. Plenty has transpired for these teams since Week 2, almost all of it bad. At least the offenses play fast. The Giants rank second in neutral pace over expected on the season, and the Cowboys are third fastest.

Both New York and Dallas’ games rank top 10 in average combined snaps, and Cowboys contests lead the league in total points. The Giants are 11th. After hiding Jaxson Dart like a bald spot since his return from injury, Mike Kafka loosened the reins on Sunday, deploying New York’s first positive PROE approach since Week 6 (+4%). Whether that will carry over outdoors is an open question — but considering the alternatives and the likelihood these teams go all out, this matchup is the clear cream of this week’s pace crop.