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Cardinals and Eagles snaps set to soar

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer (3) against the Cleveland Browns in the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Ron Schwane)

Welcome to Snaps, Pace, and Stats, which examines trends in snap totals and no-huddle usage. This year I’ll be looking at individual players on Fridays in Advanced Matchup Plays, and it will appear both here and on RotoGrinders. Before that, however, it is helpful to take a 30,000-foot view of the upcoming games, in the hope of finding out which ones will be played on fertile fantasy soil.

 

Rank Week 14 Snaps 2015 Snaps/Game Opponent Wk 14 Snps 2015 Opp Snps/Gm
1 Green Bay (81) Houston (70.5) Dallas (81) Philadelphia (70.7)
2 New Orleans (78) Philadelphia (69.1) Tampa Bay (78) Miami (68.9)
3 Denver (77) New Orleans (68.3) Oakland (77) N.Y. Giants (68.8)
4 Cleveland (74) San Diego (68.1) San Francisco (74) Jacksonville (68.2)
5 Philadelphia (73) N.Y. Jets (67.9) Buffalo (73) San Francisco (67.8)

 

Arizona at Philadelphia

The Cardinals are now running the 12th-most plays per game (65.6) and rank eighth over the last month (68). The Eagles snaps-allowed average tops the league for the season (70.7), and during the last four weeks (74.3), as an indirect result of their NFL-high no-huddle rate (70.5 percent) and pace (22.5 seconds per snap). Philadelphia is allowing the third-most points per play over the last month, Arizona owns the league’s highest points-per-play rate (0.47), and their efficient offense will be juiced with opportunity.

Projecting the Eagles to hold up their end of a back-and-forth affair is less certain. Yet they are coming off of their best game in well over a month and they run the second-most snaps per game. Sheer play volume carried several Eagles to useful fantasy days in Arizona last season when they ran 87 plays, Nick Foles threw 62 passes for 415 yards, LeSean McCoy ran 21 times for 83 yards, and Jeremy Maclin caught 12 of 16 targets for 187 yards and two scores. As Chip Kelly knows well, all three of them are gone, but the volume-producing offense remains.

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Pat Thorman is a Lead Writer for PFF Fantasy and was named 2013 Newcomer of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. You can follow him on Twitter at @Pat_Thorman

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