Welcome to FantasyPros’ weekly pace and efficiency report. Each week of the season, we’ll survey trends in snap count totals while examining pace and efficiency data. Opportunity is king in fantasy football, and teams that run more plays have more opportunities to score fantasy points.

Snap counts are the product of pace and efficiency, so examining each factor provides insight into future game environments, changes in coaching philosophy and offensive growth or decline throughout the season.

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Fantasy Football Week 2 NFL Pace & Efficiency Preview

Teams Projected for High Week 2 Snap Counts

Miami Dolphins

Miami looks like a goldmine for fantasy managers this year. It helps that they played a Chargers defense that’s not known for being staunch. Still, all of their offensive metrics look great. In Week 1, they were top 10 in both CER and seconds/snap while running a solid 65 plays.

This week, they travel to Foxborough, Mass. to face the Pats, who also ran a fast pace, though this could have been due to trailing most of the game. They weren’t terribly efficient, though, so if they can quickly get off the field, Miami will be in a position to run a ton of plays.

Seattle Seahawks

Seattle flopped last week from an opportunity perspective, running just 46 plays in 60 minutes. However, they were quite efficient and have a great matchup this week against the Lions. The last time these two teams played, it was the nuts matchup for DFS, with the winning lineup featuring six of their nine players from that game. It’s unlikely this repeats, but it’s also unlikely Seattle will run just 46 plays again with their projected efficiency. This will be a game to target once again.

New Orleans Saints

The Saints were not who I was expecting to show up in this section, but here we are. New Orleans ran about the league-average number of plays, but they ran the seventh-fastest pace, posted a solid 63.3 CER and their defense finished with the eighth-best DVOA. Additionally, they host the Panthers, who might be one of the worst teams in the league. I like New Orleans to control this game and run a lot of plays.

Teams Projected for Low Week 2 Snap Counts

New York Jets

It will be difficult to find reasons to target Jet players going forward with Aaron Rodgers out for the season, but this week will prove especially difficult. Dallas looks to have a great defense, making staying on the field and running plays more challenging. I’m likely staying away from all Jet players in DFS.

Atlanta Falcons & Green Bay Packers

Like last year, the Falcons will find their way into this section quite a lot. They’re not terrible. They’re just so slow. They somehow managed to run just 48 plays in a win against the Panthers last week. They play the Packers this week, who are also quite slow, as we know. Both teams played subpar opponents last week, so I’m not taking away much regarding their efficiency. This is a stay-away game through and through.

Noteworthy Trends

Similarly to last week, we have challenges interpreting this data. Now, instead of old data, we're working with little data. A one-week sample size is not enough data to make large conclusions. So, while teams like Indianapolis and Houston look like great plays according to the table, we know these are both teams who are projected not to win many games and are both starting rookie QBs

Some teams we think will be good had bad outings, so they won't look good on the chart. This is what I mean by statistical inference. The Bengals, for example, profile as one of the worst teams for fantasy this week, but we know that's not true. They play Baltimore in a game that could easily become a shootout. They had a bad game. It happens to everyone. It just looks worse since it's the only game they've played this year. Just take it for what it is: one bad game.

*Data from the table comes from Pro Football Reference, FTNfantasy Pace Tool, FTNfantasy DVOA, rbsdm, TeamRankings Minutes Played and TeamRankings Yards Per Play

**Composite Efficiency Score is a statistic I created using regression analysis of the efficiency metrics on the table.

*** Matchup score is a weighted metric that accounts for a team's pace, efficiency and defense, as well as their opponent's, to show which matchup is most conducive for running a high number of plays

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