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 6 NFL Pace & Efficiency Preview (2023)

Teams Projected for High Week 6 Snap Counts

Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles have the highest matchup score this week by a wide margin, and for good reason. They rank top five in both plays/60 minutes and CER. Philadelphia is also middle-of-the-pack in pace and defensive DVOA. This week, they get the Jets, a miserable football team. Although the Jets have the fifth-best pace, they’re 28th in CER and 32nd in plays/60 minutes. The Eagles should control this game and run a ton of plays, though it may be in a super positive game script, meaning more run plays than usual.

Los Angeles Rams

Los Angeles has the second-highest matchup this week as they host the pitiful Arizona Cardinals. LA has been great for fantasy thus far. They’re top 10 in plays/60 minutes, pace and efficiency. Additionally, they are a fairly condensed offense. Conversely, the visiting Cardinals have a bottom-barrel defense and a mediocre offense. Arizona should be just good enough to keep it close and the Rams on their toes, leading to a ton of plays.

Jacksonville Jaguars

The Jaguars feature the third-best matchup score as they square off against the Colts. I rarely include the top three teams in that metric because, like any other, it doesn’t tell the whole story, and we need to use context. However, I like all featured matchups on paper this week. The Colts will be without Anthony Richardson this week, and while Gardner Minshew is serviceable, he’s just a guy. On the other hand, Jacksonville righted the ship on Sunday against Buffalo, and I suspect that will carry into this game.

Teams Projected for Low Week 6 Snap Counts

New York Jets

As I mentioned above, the Jets have a good pace but fail to impress in any other facet. Zach Wilson came crashing down to earth, and now their star guard, Alijah Vera-Tucker, is out for the year. Unlike some bad teams, they don’t even have an offense that can put up stats in garbage time. Eagles should roll over them and control the snap count.

Tennessee Titans

I’m not including them because they have a particularly tough matchup but because they are the Tennessee Titans. They refuse to run a modern offense, running an almost league-low 56.5 snaps/60 minutes at the slowest pace in the league. Their opponent, Baltimore, has a strong defense so that might further compound the slow nature of the Titans. This is a pretty boring game from a fantasy perspective, but it’s even less interesting in the context of DFS. This game is an avoid.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Similar to Tennessee, this isn’t necessarily a terrible spot for the Bucs, but they’re just not systemically great from a pace and efficiency perspective. They have a good defense but an average offense (at best). Detroit has a good CER and defense but plays rather slowly, meaning fewer plays are available for both teams. I’m convinced that Tampa Bay looks better on the table than they actually are due to a fairly easy schedule to start the season. Maybe they come out of the bye with a pep in their step, but I think that’s unlikely.

Notes & Trends

• Every week before I write this, I look back at the calls I made last week to see if they were right and try to think about why I missed when I do miss. The most common theme I've found is I tend to undervalue the power of "garbage time." When a team is ahead, they will be slow and not run many plays. When a team is behind, they will run an extremely fast pace and try to run as many plays as possible to get back in the game. This, of course, isn't reflected in the table because I use neutral situation pace, not total pace. I still think it's better to look at neutral pace as a default, but going forward, I will be cognisant of spots that look good in the table but might not play out that way in real life due to the "garbage time" effect.
• The biggest riser in CER is... the Chicago Bears. Again, we saw a similar trend last year, where they started slow and picked up a few weeks into the season. It's hard to know how sticky this will be, considering their past two games are against two of the worst teams in the NFL, the Commanders and the Broncos. This week, they get a Minnesota team that just lost Justin Jefferson for a bit and looks to be headed toward a Helsinki fire sale. So we might be in for another good week. This is a team to keep an eye on.
• The biggest faller in CER this week goes to the Cowboys. This team has looked really good in half of their games and terrible in the other half. This might be a team where we need to heavily target their plus matchups and completely fade their tough matchups.

*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