The Kansas City Chiefs vanquished the San Francisco 49ers 44-23 in Week 7, getting themselves back into the win column ahead of the bye week.
The offense played 64 total snaps, including those late-game snaps with the second string. The defense played a whopping 79 total snaps on the day, the most in a single game this season for Kansas City.
What else can we learn from the weekly snap numbers? Here’s a look at how the snaps came down in Week 7:
*Snap counts via NFL Game Statistics and Information System
Observations
- Prior to Week 7, Clyde Edwards-Helaire had never played fewer than 21 offensive snaps in a single game. This week he played 17 or 27% of the offensive snaps, good for the lowest total among Chiefs RBs this week. Isiah Pacheco, who notched his first career start against the 49ers, had the second most snaps. Jerick McKinnon had the most among the RBs.
- Mecole Hardman was atop the leaderboard in snaps for the receivers this week, earning 40 total offensive snaps after back-to-back weeks of 30 or so snaps. He seems to finally be healthy after a heel injury limited him earlier this season.
- Noah Gray also played more snaps (37) than both JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling (35). Two of the team’s top three skill players in terms of snaps were tight ends (Travis Kelce led the skill group with 50).
- Backups saw six snaps on offense on Sunday. On the offensive line Geron Christian played left tackle, Prince Tega Wanogho right tackle and Nick Allegretti at center.
- Juan Thornhill was the only player to play 100% of the defensive snaps this week. It’s rare that only a single player gets 100% of the defensive work for this team.
- Willie Gay Jr. played 44 defensive snaps in his return, while Darius Harris played 17 snaps. I think this was a mix of protecting Gay Jr. in his first game in a month and finding a way to keep Harris involved on defense. They might need to rethink the latter part of that strategy.
- Khalen Saunders and Derrick Nnadi have been getting a fairly even split at defensive tackle since Tershawn Wharton’s injury. This week, Taylor Stallworth was active for the first time and played 14 defensive snaps. He was called for roughing the passer on one of those snaps.
- Carlos Dunlap played the most defensive snaps of his Chiefs career on Sunday, despite exiting the game briefly due to injury. He was quite effective with the increased snap count.
- Jack Cochrane was the only player outside of the specialists to play special teams-only snaps on Sunday.
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