NFL

Adjusted NFL Pace and Pass Rate Report: Ranking the Divisional Round's Fastest Games

Which teams are fastest and slowest after adjusting for context, who throws the most frequently when the game is still winnable, and what does it mean for the upcoming week of games?

Pace and pass rate can tell us a lot about offensive tendencies for NFL teams, but you'll often find some flawed ways of analyzing such data.

Teams that are trailing will -- naturally -- be inclined both to play faster and throw more often than they may initially want to do.

Conversely, perhaps quick, pass-heavy teams are getting out to big leads and are then slowing things down in the fourth quarter and grinding clock.

These will affect raw outputs for team data, so I wanted to account for that.

That's why I'm presenting both pace (seconds per play) and pass rate while looking only at plays on which a team's pre-snap win probability (as designated by nflfastR's live win models) was between 20% and 80%.

Here are the results entering this week.

Passes and Rushes
When Win
Probability is 20-80%
Seconds/
Play
Rank Pass
Rate
Rank
TB28.5467.9%1
KC29.11063.4%3
BUF29.51566.1%2
TEN30.11951.9%28
LA30.32162.3%5
CIN30.72560.7%11
SF30.72651.6%29
GB32.83260.7%12

Wild Card Round Preview

Here's a look at this week's games in terms of average pace and pass rate. The table is initially sorted by average offensive pace, so the higher the game, the faster it should be -- and the more plays we should anticipate.

Game Avg.
Pace
Rank Avg.
Pass%
Rank Away
Pace
Home
Pace
Away
Pass%
Home
Pass%
BUF@KC29.3164.7%229.129.563.4%66.1%
LA@TB29.4265.1%128.530.367.9%62.3%
CIN@TEN30.4356.3%330.130.751.9%60.7%
SF@GB31.8456.1%432.830.760.7%51.6%