49ers snaps grade them 7 points a game better than the betting market does

The 49ers' snaps say they are an 11.4-point team per game. The market expected 4.4. That 7-point gap ranks second among the 32 teams the market undersells, and it is the most surprising number in this week's Lab read of San Francisco.

11.4: the snaps see a bigger team than the market does

Over eight games, San Francisco's real margin is 9.9 points per game. The snap-based deserved margin is 11.4, so the results are slightly below the play and not above it. The market's pregame expectation, 4.4 per game, sits well under both.

The 49ers are 5-3-0 against the closing spread, which fits a team priced too low for most of the year. Dallas is the next test: San Francisco is a 3.5-point favorite on the road in a game with a total of 55.5. Those figures are context. The 49ers' 9.9-point average margin is more than double the 4.4 the market started the year expecting.

Market vs Snaps

30th: the cap is not on the field

Paid vs Played ranks San Francisco 30th of 32 in value. The 49ers have spent $258.9 million in cap, and 64 percent of it is on the field. Another $26.6 million sits on injured reserve.

The split is visible at the extremes. Connor Colby, the right guard, carries a $1.03 million cap hit and has played 100 percent of the snaps. He ranks in the 26th percentile for pay and the 88th for playing time. Brandon Aiyuk, the receiver, carries $12.45 million, sits in the 95th percentile for pay and the 0th for playing time.

That matters on Sunday because the interior of the line is held by one of the cheapest starters on the roster. The record is 7-1 despite the value rank.

Paid vs Played

79%: the shotgun pass rate in the least shotgun offense

Scheme DNA tags San Francisco with the most pre-snap motion and the lowest shotgun rate in the league. Even so, the 49ers pass out of the shotgun 79 percent of the time. From under center the pass rate is 35 percent.

That contrast is the system. Motion and under-center runs set up the pass, and the passes come from the gun. A defense cannot read the play from the formation alone. The 49ers rank 14th of 32 in formation predictability, which is the middle of the league.

Dallas will see motion on most snaps. What it can read is the pre-snap alignment, and that tells it the play less often than it would for half the league.

Scheme DNA

10 points: the two-minute drill beats its expectation

Kyle Shanahan's Clock IQ score is 49 out of 99, 18th in the league. The two-minute drill is the part of that profile that runs ahead of the model. San Francisco has had four such drives and scored 10 points, against an expectation of 2.8. That is 7.2 points above what the situations typically produce.

The timeout count is the cost. The 49ers burn one timeout per game, against a league average of 0.75.

The 4:25 PM ET kickoff on Fox on Sunday, Nov. 15 puts San Francisco in Dallas in Week 10. If the game is close late, the two-minute numbers and the timeout habit both come into play.

Clock IQ