Bijan Robinson Had No Touches on Either Fourth-Quarter Scoring Drive

With 1:02 left in the first half, on third and 20 from their own 22, the Falcons handed the ball to Bijan Robinson. He gained 13 yards. They punted.

That was his only third-down carry of the day; five of the other eight came on first down. Third and 20 is a down on which the handoff is a concession.

Chicago Bears 31, Atlanta Falcons 23 was the final at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta's third home defeat in three home games. ESPN's Week 6 fantasy winners and losers column, posted at 8:38 Sunday evening, has Robinson as the number one loser of the week at season lows of 7.3 fantasy points and 11 touches, 53 total yards, and Matt Bowen's entry attributes it to "negative game flow and the Bears' ability to control offensive tempo." His verb is that those things "limited the opportunities." That is a claim about how many snaps Robinson got, and it is correct.

The share is not in dispute

Concede it completely, because the drive chart does. Ten of Atlanta's 12 possessions began with the deficit at 14 or more, and the first one that started two scores down started with 1:07 left in the first quarter. The offense held the ball for 19:52, faced a mean third-down distance of 9.5 yards with six of 12 needing nine or more, produced one rushing first down against nine passing ones, and threw on all three fourth downs, failing each time.

Nobody runs on that profile. And no quote available to me establishes any plan for Robinson's carry count, so the question is not what anyone meant by the usage but what the usage produced.

Inside the 6.8

The nine carries went for 61 yards, 6.8 apiece, with a 23-yard long. The same column prints a per-carry rate for two other backs on its losers list -- 3.4 on 17 carries for Derrick Henry, 2.6 for Rhamondre Stevenson, both as printed there and neither re-verified here -- and prints no rate and no carry count for Robinson. Search the body for "6.8" and you get nothing; the same for "yards per carry." That is an omission, not an error, and worth naming as exactly that.

The correction has its own trap. The 6.8 is not a flat rate, and quoting it flat to argue efficient-and-underused repeats the same averaging mistake in the other direction. By quarter: one carry for 6, three for 45, four for 6, one for 4. The first four gained 51 yards, 12.8 each; the last five gained 10, at 2.0. The nine-yarder and the 23-yarder came 22 seconds apart in the second quarter, and most of what followed was a yard at a time.

Set against his own six games and nothing wider, 6.8 is the second-best rate of his season, behind 7.6 at New Orleans in Week 4, on a line of 111 carries for 641 yards, 5.8 a carry, 18.5 carries a game. Nine carries is his volume low by seven. Both are true at once.

The club credited with controlling tempo did it at 3.0 a carry on 33 attempts -- D'Andre Swift at 2.8, Roschon Johnson at 3.9 -- out-rushing Atlanta by 21 attempts while averaging 3.3 yards less every time it ran.

The fourth quarter, without him

Then the offense worked. Two possessions, 13 plays, 148 yards, two touchdowns and two converted two-point tries, 16 points. Twelve of those 13 plays were Michael Penix Jr. throws and the 13th was Penix running for a yard. Robinson had no carries and no targets on either drive; he had not been thrown at since 1:14 was left in the second quarter.

Sunday night I argued that the 31 points Chicago scored said more about Atlanta's offense than its defense. The fourth quarter is the evidence I did not have then, and it cuts both ways: when this offense finally generated yardage in volume, it did it with the handoff removed entirely, and Penix took five sacks for 31 getting there.

San Francisco comes to Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday at 1 p.m., 5-0 and holding the conference's top playoff seed on the standings read at 6:50 Monday morning, with a home game against Washington still to play tonight -- the same read that had Atlanta ninth in the seeding at 2-4 overall and 0-3 at home, with Seattle, not Atlanta, first outside the field. Nine carries at 6.8 does not establish what 18 would have produced, and six games do not either. What Sunday can establish is whether this offense keeps a game close enough for the workload question to be asked at a neutral score.