Welcome to the Week 2 edition of Snaps, Pace & Stats, where we examine trends in snap totals and no-huddle usage. It is meant as a 30,000-foot view of upcoming games, with the goal of identifying which matchups will — and which will not — be played on fertile fantasy soil.
Rank | Week 1 Snaps | 2015 Snaps/Game | Opponent Wk 1 Snaps | 2015 Opp Snaps/Gm |
1 | Seattle (78) | Houston (70.4) | Miami (78) | Philadelphia (71.8) |
2 | San Francisco (77) | Philadelphia (68.9) | Los Angeles (77) | N.Y. Giants (69.1) |
3 | Dallas (75) | San Diego (68.8) | N.Y. Giants (75) | Jacksonville (68.9) |
4 | Philadelphia (73) | New Orleans (68.5) | Cleveland (73) | St. Louis (68.2) |
5 | Houston (72) | Baltimore (67.7) | Chicago (72) | Oakland (67.8) |
New Orleans Saints at New York Giants
It is hard to forget these teams combining for 141 plays, 1,024 yards and 101 points when they met in Week 8 of last season. While expecting a carbon copy of those fireworks is sure to disappoint, the rematch will be played at a similarly elevated pace. The up-tempo Giants ranked second-highest in plays-allowed last year (69.1 per game) and let the Cowboys pile up 75 on Sunday, despite holding them to a 3.4-yard average on 30 carries. The Saints will be more than happy to skew pass-heavy instead of running into a wall — which will help raise play counts on both sides.
The Giants host a Saints “defense” that ranked bottom-three in essentially every category last year, and didn’t look much better on Sunday. We got a glimpse of how quickly New York can score when they actually had the ball against Dallas — which was only for 54 plays, or 13.2 below their non-Cowboys-games average from 2015. The additions of Sterling Shepard and an again-functional Victor Cruz give their no-huddle attack (53.7-percent in Week 1; 2nd-most) additional dimensions that the now-unemployed Rueben Randle did not. It is far from sneaky — especially after last season’s game — but we want heavy exposure here.
DOMINATE FANTASY FOOTBALL & BETTING WITH AI-POWERED DATA & TOOLS TRUSTED BY ALL 32
Already have a subscription? Log In