Thorman’s Snaps and Pace: Week 7

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Up In Pace | Slow-Paced Slogs | No-Huddle Notes

Welcome to the Week 7 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.

Whoever said “a bad day of football beats a good day picking apples” never sat next to a pissed-off spouse watching anything like Sunday’s main slate. We were back below 44 points per game, there wasn’t a single player with 30 fantasy points for the first time in over 15 years, and the only cider donuts we got filled Cam Skattebo’s box score.

While much has also been made of the face-meltingly useless penalty increase — they are up 22% compared to the last three seasons — it also has a muting effect on play volume. When many penalties are called, the play and its results are voided — but the game clock gets restarted with a fresh 25 seconds on the play clock.

We’re paying two plays worth of game clock but only getting one actual snap. Considering this occurs on offensive holding calls (+14% over 2025), neutral zone infractions (+48%), and other live-ball penalties, it’s a problem.

While we wait for these play-sapping, power-tripping, peptide-popping Hochuli wannabes to get a grip… 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

Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Carolina Panthers

This matchup would have been a preseason candidate for the Slogs. If anything, we could theoretically envision a Baker Mayfield-led Bucs offense driving whatever pace the game could muster. Yet, for the first third of the season, Tampa has been killing clocks, and Carolina is tickling the tempo. Life comes at you fast — or slow, if you’re the Bucs and rank 22nd in neutral pace over expected. Surprisingly, in perhaps his final start before Mayfield returns, rookie Jalon Daniels was sprinkling in tempo from Tampa’s first touchdown drive while converting a pair of no-huddle third downs. The Bucs ranked eighth in neutral play-clock seconds, sixth in neutral pace over expected, and fourth in no-huddle rate on the week. Their overtime game with the snail-paced Steelers yielded a healthy 127 combined snaps before the extra period. It was 10 more plays than Tampa’s full-game average and at least showed the offense can be quicker than Todd Bowles deciphering a desk calendar. The Bucs’ PROE (+1%) climbed to its highest point since Mayfield went down, just in time for his return.

As we hoped, the Panthers did not lose that pace-pushing feeling during their Week 5 bye. Carolina turned in the second-highest PROE of Week 6 (+7%) and finished fourth in neutral pace over expected during their win in Philadelphia. They also put up 25 points on a defense that was ranked eighth in points per play allowed. The Panthers are third in explosive play rate, fifth in points per snap, and sixth in yards per play. Their games yield the fifth-most total points (53.8), and no contests produce more combined snaps (134.2). Carolina’s offense ranks third in PROE and third in neutral pass rate (64%), while the coverage-challenged, banged-up defense has faced the 12th-highest opponent PROE over the last month. While Bowles is always -500 to try and boomer it up with handoffs — you can’t spell ‘bet low odds’ without ‘Todd Bowles’ — facing a cornerback-crippled Panthers defense ranked fifth in rushing success rate and 20th through the air should be too tempting not to pass on.

Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions