Photo by All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsTonight Is as Soft as October Gets
Tonight brings the weakest opponent on Atlanta's October schedule by record, and Atlanta is still the underdog in it. The three games after this one are a combined 10-2.
Atlanta has one soft spot left on its October schedule and it is tonight.
By record, New Orleans is the weakest opponent on Atlanta's October calendar. Here is the calendar, all of it, records attached.
Tonight at New Orleans, 1-2. October 11, home to Baltimore, 3-1. October 18, home to Chicago, 3-1. October 25, home to San Francisco, 4-0.
Those three are a combined 10-2. Tonight's opponent is 1-2. Their playoff seeds read 5, 5 and 2. New Orleans sits 13th and Atlanta 12th. Fixtures off the league schedule feed, records and seeds off the standings table, pulled today.
Now the part that cuts against me. Atlanta is the road team in a dome, and as of Monday morning the market has New Orleans favored by a point and a half. The underdog is the team with the soft spot. Soft is a claim about the opponent, not the circumstances. All three hard ones are at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Atlanta has played once this year and scored three points.
Two receipts of mine sit on this stretch. On September 24 I said the league would leave the Baltimore game on Sunday night. The schedule still reads 8:20 Sunday. That one holds, and the reward is a 3-1 Baltimore six days from now.
The other resolves tonight. On October 2 I put Atlanta under 20 points in this game, in writing. It has cleared 20 once in three games.
Winner reaches 2-2 and draws level on record with Carolina, which won in Atlanta 34-3 and leads the division alone. Loser goes to 1-3 with that 10-2 waiting.
If the 35 points at Lambeau meant anything, tonight is where it says so.
The Tilt
Atlanta is the underdog tonight against the weakest opponent on its October schedule.
— Dex Ponce
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