Coming soon to college football: fewer plays, shorter games, lots of disagreement
Possible changes to college football include running the clock after first downs and after incomplete passes.
Paul MyerbergThe Baltimore Ravens ran an NFL-high 1,185 plays in 2021 for an average of 69.7 snaps per game across the league's 17-game regular season.
Last season's Football Bowl Subdivision runner-up, Alabama, left the Ravens in the dust: 1,119 plays in 15 games, or an average of 74.6 offensive plays per game. Another 60 FBS teams exceeded Baltimore's per-game average, including half of the SEC.
At last year's FBS-wide rate of 68.2 plays per game, a college team playing 17 games would face substantially more plays per season than an NFL counterpart. Professional teams averaged 63.3 plays per game in 2021, which amounts to a difference of roughly 83 plays over the course of a 17-game season — meaning FBS players would essentially be subjected to the wear and tear of one additional game per year.
NFL DRAFT HUB: Latest NFL Draft mock drafts, news, live picks, grades and analysis.