Thorman’s Snaps and Pace: Week 4

Welcome to the Week 4 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.

Small samples breed variance — and that’s already been proven in single games and over the course of the season’s first few weeks. When we flip a coin two times, it’s no surprise if it comes up heads twice. When we flip it 100 times, those results will be closer to 50/50. Those in favor of the most likely outcome want as many iterations as possible.

So it’s not great news for favorites that only six teams are producing at least 124.4 combined offensive snaps in their games, when that was league average last year — even during a down season for play volume. Only one team averaged fewer than 120 combined plays last year, and 10 teams are under that mark now.

There are many reasons play volume is down, from shallower target depth breeding fewer yards per pass and higher completion rates that keep clocks grinding, to new kickoff rules, to a crop of quarterbacks who collectively need their hands held pre-snap more than the Bradys and Mannings did.

The knock-on effect is favorites have fewer opportunities for their dominance to come to fruition. Just ask the Packers if they ran enough plays in Cleveland on Sunday, or if the Bills would rather have had more snaps against the Dolphins on Thursday. The solution is playing faster, but not everyone gets the memo — we’re looking at you, McDermott and Siriani.

For us, it leaves fewer glaringly up-pace spots with the promise of ample play volume. Those mythical matchups do still exist, and we shall find them — so 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.

Up In Pace | Slow-Paced Slogs | Pace Notes

Up In Pace

New Orleans Saints at Buffalo Bills

One of the few bankable play-volume catalysts of the early season, the Saints are going to get trucked again. At least they play fast while getting run over. Despite their smothering in Seattle on Sunday, New Orleans posted the second-fastest neutral pace of Week 3 and got off 70 snaps — well above the depressed current league average (61.1). The Saints don’t necessarily bring good football to town, but they deliver play volume. Their three opponents had matchups with New Orleans that averaged 5.7 more offensive snaps than in their non-Saints games. Only the Cowboys and Browns have thrown it more, and the Saints have two pass catchers ranked top 10 in targets, despite New Orleans’ PROE ranking just 27th. It’s not always pretty with the Saints — actually it’s rarely pretty — but at least there’s a lot of it.

The Bills should take a lesson. They played with their food last Thursday long enough to require a random roughing-the-punter penalty to avoid flirting with disaster. Buffalo ranks 23rd in neutral pace and, instead of lapping bad teams, their plodding will invite unnecessary variance. Perhaps 10 days to think about that inspires them to play faster, but they’ve shown zero inclination to pick up the pace since Joe Brady took over as OC. Still, they are a wagon — and as 16.5-point favorites are unlikely to be forced into an aggressive offensive approach. Fortunately, the Saints will handle pace-pushing, which should elevate the average combined plays of Buffalo’s games (120.7). Bills contests do rank third in total points (57.8), as Buffalo is second only to the Colts in scoring and sits third in explosive play rate (13.1%). Pure blowouts often are played sparingly due to favorites taking a vanilla, clock-killing approach — but they don’t often contain this much opportunity.