Atlanta Has Allowed 32 Points a Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium

Atlanta has allowed 64 points in two games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Carolina scored 34 of them on September 20, Baltimore scored 30 on October 11, and in the three games Atlanta has played somewhere else it has allowed 58 -- 20 at Pittsburgh, 14 at Green Bay, 24 at New Orleans. That is 32.0 points a game at home against 19.3 on the road, and the two halves add to the 122 points Atlanta has conceded all season.

Two days ago I wrote the record -- 0-2 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. I never wrote the points.

The scoring half has a quarterback in the middle of it

The other side of that ledger is the one being passed around: 26 points in two home games, 93 in three on the road. It is accurate and it is confounded. Cooper Rush started Weeks 1 and 2, and Atlanta scored 16 points in those two games, worst in the league, per ESPN's Marc Raimondi. Michael Penix Jr.'s game log returns exactly three appearances this season -- Green Bay, New Orleans, Baltimore -- and he is cleared for Sunday with no designation.

Partition the five games by who took the snap and the home half comes apart in your hands: 3 points in Rush's home game, 23 in Penix's. Atlanta has played exactly one home game with the quarterback who starts Sunday.

The defensive half does not

Nothing comparable happened to the defense. Nobody took over all of its snaps in Week 3, which is why the 64 is the number I want and the 26 is not.

It has not been static, either, and counting only the other club's absences would be advocacy. A.J. Terrell Jr. has been on injured reserve since September 22, two days after the Carolina game, per the injuries block on ESPN's game summary; Da'Shawn Hand and Yasir Abdullah are there too. C.J. Henderson, whom ESPN's depth chart lists first at left cornerback, is out with a groin injury.

What two home games can carry

The trouble with the defensive half is the offensive half's trouble moved over a position: what else those two games have in common. Atlanta's home opponents are Carolina and Baltimore; its road opponents are Pittsburgh, Green Bay and New Orleans. In a five-game schedule, venue and opponent are the same variable, and no home-road pass-defense split exists to put underneath the points -- only season totals: 248.4 net passing yards allowed a game, 6.2 yards per attempt on the 210 attempts faced.

Five games will produce a venue split for anybody. Chicago has scored 53 points in three games at Soldier Field and 66 in two on the road, and the 66 is 59 at Carolina and 7 at Green Bay. In the 20 results returned across two differently anchored searches Saturday, not one set Atlanta's home points beside its road points, and the only Penix home-road split in that sample was last season's, which ran the other way.

One of my own numbers moved. On October 9 I printed Atlanta's opponent rushing at 48.3 yards a game, first in the league and named volume as the falsifier: Baltimore would be the first club to actually run at it. Baltimore ran at it. It is 80.2 a game now, 401 yards, fourth. The rank nearly held. The value did not.

Sunday adds a game

Neither defense arrives whole, which is its own argument against expecting Sunday to settle anything. On the depth chart ESPN published Saturday, two of Chicago's absent defenders were listed first at their position -- Dayo Odeyingbo at right defensive end, T.J. Edwards at middle linebacker -- and Tyrique Stevenson Sr. is questionable at right cornerback. The board has moved twice more since: Odeyingbo went on injured reserve Saturday night with a quadriceps injury, and Anthony Johnson Jr. followed Sunday morning. Montez Sweat is suspended two games under the league's performance-enhancing substances policy and, barring a successful appeal, unavailable. Za'Darius Smith, Atlanta's co-leader in sacks at 2.5 alongside Samson Ebukam, is questionable with a neck injury. A depth chart is a snapshot of today, not a record of last week.

Chicago has scored 119 points in five games. Atlanta has scored 119 points in five games. Both average 23.8, there is no ordinal between them, and they reached the same total by different routes -- which is a fair description of how little a five-game number tells you.

So I am not going to tell you Atlanta has a home problem. The question is narrower than the one being asked out loud: the same defense has conceded 32.0 a game in this building and 19.3 everywhere else, and nothing in five games tells me which number is the real one. Sunday adds a third home game to a two-game sample. That is a data point, not an answer.