Chicago Scored Ten Points on Nine Yards of Offense

Chicago scored ten of its thirty-one points on two drives that gained nine yards between them.

The first ran three plays and started at the Atlanta 10, where Zachariah Branch muffed a punt and Josh Blackwell recovered it on the spot. Colston Loveland took a short pass to the 2, an incompletion followed, and D'Andre Swift ran it in with 1:26 left in the half. The second started at the Atlanta 31, after Branch fumbled a kickoff return that Nick McCloud recovered, and it moved backwards: Caleb Williams sacked for nine, Swift for one yard, a seven-yard completion, net minus-one. Cairo Santos kicked a 50-yard field goal four seconds into the fourth quarter. Ten points, nine yards, seven defensive snaps.

This morning I printed a number and said Sunday would grade it. Sunday graded it. Atlanta has now conceded 95 points in three games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium against 58 in three on the road — 31.7 a game against 19.3 — and Chicago made it a third consecutive home game at thirty or more. The split survived its own falsifier.

The explanation did not.

The passing numbers point the wrong way

This morning I wrote that no home-road pass-defense split existed to put underneath those points — only season totals. It exists now, and the first thing it says is that Atlanta allows more passing yardage away from home: 262.3 net yards a game on the road, 241.7 at the Benz. Twenty extra yards a game in the building where it concedes twelve fewer points.

That inversion is an artifact, and the artifact is instructive. Atlanta's three home opponents have thrown 104 times. Its three road opponents have thrown 142. Green Bay alone put up 53 attempts, because Atlanta won that game by three scores, and a team trailing by three scores throws whether or not it wants to. Counting stats inherit game state. Rate stats don't.

So take the rates. Opposing quarterbacks have completed 74.0 percent of their passes at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and 57.7 percent everywhere else. Net yards per attempt: 6.97 at home, 5.54 on the road. Williams went 30-of-36 on Sunday, which is 83.3 percent, and his longest completion travelled 25 yards — 305 passing yards assembled without one deep ball landing. The pass defense is worse at home. It is worse by a margin that shows up only when you stop counting yards and start counting attempts.

The gap that is three times larger

And it is not the biggest gap in the file. Atlanta has allowed 124.7 rushing yards a game at home on 4.16 a carry, and 41.7 on the road on 2.55. That is not a split; that is two different defenses. Opponents convert half their third downs here — 23 of 46 — against 34.9 percent on the road.

Those three numbers produce one number, and the one number is the clock. Opponent possession in Atlanta's three home games, in order: 29:31, 35:10, 40:08. Chicago held the ball for two-thirds of a football game and ran 73 plays to Atlanta's 50, gaining 5.0 a play — the lowest per-play figure Atlanta has surrendered at home this season, under Carolina's 5.7 and Baltimore's 5.5. Atlanta played its most efficient home defensive game by that measure and lost by eight.

Part of the defensive number is an offensive number

Atlanta ran the ball twelve times. Twelve. The first five games produced 31, 32, 41, 35 and 26 attempts, and both road wins were built on the high end of that range — 41 carries at Green Bay, 35 at New Orleans. Bijan Robinson averaged 6.8 yards on his nine. The thing that was working was the thing that stopped being called.

The rest follows arithmetically. Three of twelve on third down, none of three on fourth, three lost fumbles, 19:52 of possession. A defense that never leaves the field will eventually be scored on, and the unit deciding how often it leaves wears the same uniform. Michael Penix Jr. threw three touchdowns, took five sacks and was stripped on three of them; Atlanta recovered two, and the one Chicago kept ended the game.

Atlanta's defense did force one turnover — Jessie Bates III knocked the ball from Roschon Johnson, Harold Perkins Jr. recovered at the 43 — and the offense scored in five plays. Both fourth-quarter drives looked like that: ninety-one yards in eight plays, fifty-seven in five. Sixteen points in a quarter Atlanta entered down twenty-one. Per snap, this offense was fine. Per possession, it was the whole problem.

Three home games is still not enough, which is what I said this morning when it was two. Venue and opponent remain the same variable: Carolina, Baltimore and Chicago at home; Pittsburgh, Green Bay and New Orleans away. Six games will manufacture a split for anybody.

But the shape of the thing has changed. The question this morning was why Atlanta's defense comes apart indoors. The file says it doesn't come apart — it gets outnumbered, out-possessed, and handed short fields by its own special teams, and then the scoreboard writes a sentence about the secondary that the secondary didn't earn.

San Francisco comes to Mercedes-Benz Stadium next Sunday unbeaten and holding the conference's top seed, averaging 128.6 rushing yards a game at 4.63 a carry. Atlanta is 2-4. The fourth home game is the one I'd actually bet the thesis on, and I don't like the matchup for it.