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Up In Pace | Roll Up Your Sleeves | Slow-Paced Slogs | No-Huddle Notes
Welcome to the Week 5 edition of Snaps & Pace — back-to-back winner of the FSWA’s 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.
Week 4 delivered another high-scoring slate — our third in four weeks. It also served up the second straight voluminous result. Both last week (125.4 plays per game) and this one (125.6) blew past 2025’s combined-plays average (122.6) despite zero overtime contests.
It is remarkable that we saw so many snaps despite the Jets and Dolphins combining for 69 plays. If you’ve spent even a short time around here, you know how ridiculous that is. Nine different offenses had at least 69 snaps in Week 4 alone.
Hopefully you saved some of those plays and points, because Week 5 is a sick joke. It doesn’t take more than a glance at the chart below to see we’re in for some serious main-slate mudwrestling.
Three of the top five teams in both combined plays and total points are playing in primetime or on bye. There are only two matchups on a meaty 11-game main slate projected for more points than the current seasonal average (46.2), and one of them barely breaches it. Thank you, schedule-making AI — that’s pretty hard to do.
We cannot feel pleasure without pain, you guys — 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
Detroit Lions at Arizona Cardinals
Calling this game a diamond in the rough might be an insult to the rough — whatever that is. The only question is how much exposure we want to the, by far, highest-totaled main-slate matchup (54.5). Fortunately, these teams yield the kind of play volume that allows us to dig deep. The Lions offer fantasy’s most fruitful game environments, with contests ranking second in combined snaps (133.8) and first in total points (61.5) — a full field goal clear of second place. Not only is Detroit’s offense top six in EPA per play, but the defense is dead last — while allowing the sixth-most yards per snap and the league’s highest explosive play rate. Their sideways game scripts might be too much stimulation even for Dan Campbell.
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