Most rock grooves put the snare on 2 and 4. Tom-driven grooves are the exception: the backbeat lives on the toms, the snare is either absent or relegated to ghost-note duty, and the resulting texture is more atmospheric, more cinematic, and (often) more menacing than a normal rock groove can ever sound. Phil Collins's In the Air Tonight is the obvious touchstone — that song's drum groove is essentially a tom-and-kick pattern that becomes a fill at a famous moment. But the trick is everywhere: in U2's atmospheric verses, in modern indie rock that wants to sound dramatic, in any drum part that needs to feel tribal.
The lesson here is voicing — getting the listener's ear off the snare line and onto the toms. The notation continues to use the standard snare line for the snare voice (when present), but most of the rhythmic activity sits below that, on the high tom (e/5), mid tom (d/5), and floor tom (a/4). Volume balance matters: a tom groove with the snare suddenly louder destroys the illusion. Ghost snares should be barely audible against the tom hits.
The third exercise is the structural trick that powers In the Air Tonight and a hundred imitators: a descending tom phrase that's ambiguous — is it a fill, or is it the groove? The answer is yes. When the same tom phrase repeats every bar, it stops being a fill and becomes the song's actual time-keeping. That blurring of fill-and-groove is one of rock's most powerful textural moves.