NFL DFS Pace of Play & Stacks for Divisional Round (Fantasy Football)

Pace of play gives the prospective DFS player an opportunity to consider not just Vegas totals but how the game will be played out in a given week. Game flow is a tricky rabbit hole to jump down when you consider the endless scenarios that can play out in a game. Stacking up-tempo offenses who can keep the ball moving is crucial to gaining an edge in DFS. Even slight differentiations of team trends matter in a world where volume is king.

Each week I’ll highlight my favorite game environments factoring in their pace metrics, stacks to consider for tournaments, and five dart throws to shoot for the moon with.

Game Pace Score

A reminder of a simple metric I introduced a couple of years ago: Game Pace Score(GPS). I liked the acronym to also give you a “compass” of how the game total and neutral pace statistics come together. These scores are ranked 1-5 with five indicating the pace of the play is everything you want for a DFS bonanza.

• 5– A back-and-forth shootout is looming. Both teams are pace-up and both sport team implied totals of 25+.
• 4– An up-tempo spot worth game stacking in DFS in multiple ways. Consider multiple game scripts in play.
• 3– This game could go either way. Often, these are onslaught spots for teams with healthy implied totals or games that hit the under because two middling offenses collide.
• 2– Strong indications of a game you want to stay away from. Usually, the pace is dragged down by one team with an absurdly slow neutral pace or a team with a team implied total so low it drags the entire game environment through the mud.
• 1– This has all the makings of a plodder. These games have totals UNDER 40 which gives you zero confidence in DFS.

For the Divisional Round, I’ve sorted by all eight team implied totals while focusing on pass rate over expectation (PROE), EPA metrics, and factor that for a final GPS score.

We can focus on adjustment these teams made in the WildCard round in the game writeups but the EPA stats featured above are from Weeks 1-18.

Historical playoff grading and efficiency by game for remaining AFC quarterbacks:

– Patrick Mahomes has been consistently strong
– Josh Allen all over the spectrum
– C.J. Stroud: so far so good
– Lamar Jackson has struggled, in a limited sample pic.twitter.com/xrgP0ZUACX

— Kevin Cole (@KevinCole___) January 17, 2024

Houston Texans @ Baltimore Ravens

If you aren’t rooting for DeMeco Ryans and the Texans at some level in your heart, I might go full Mercutio on you and pronounce a “plague upon your house!” as this is easily one of the best stories in pro sports right now. OC Bobby Slowik is going to be a popular head coaching candidate (please Falcons please!) based on how he’s let C.J. Stroud do his thing in the intermediate area of the field and averaged a career-high +0.69 EPA per dropback in his postseason debut, the most by a rookie QB in a playoff game in the Next Gen Stats era. He had the 3rd highest passer rating versus zone coverage, which the Ravens will throw a lot at him. The running game might be tough to trust but as I detailed in the First Look article, Devin Singletary is undervalued when you consider how he has the backfield all to himself. The Texans ran plays at the fastest rate (28.2 seconds) of all remaining playoff teams in the regular season and last week against Cleveland, they averaged over 8 yards per play if you exclude the 4th quarter when they were milking the clock. On FanDuel, a Stroud double-stack could give you leverage on the field if you think the rookie once again flips the scripts against the league’s best defense.

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