Cincinnati Is Going to Let Atlanta Run the Ball. That Is Not Good News.

Cincinnati is going to let Atlanta run the ball on Sunday.

That is not the good news it sounds like.

CBS Sports put two writers on Bengals-Falcons in Madrid Thursday and they came out on opposite sides. Jordan Dajani took Atlanta and the three points: Falcons 27, Bengals 23. Jared Dubin took Cincinnati: Bengals 27, Falcons 20. Same game, same week, same eight games of evidence, two answers. A third CBS column the same day runs under the headline "Bengals rout Falcons in Madrid."

Here is the part nobody should skip past. Both of them argued about the run game.

Dajani's case is that Cincinnati's front is soft and Bijan Robinson is about to eat. Dubin's case is that Bijan Robinson has vanished and Cincinnati will keep him quiet. One of those men is wrong about the premise.

So I went and counted.

Cincinnati cannot stop the run, and it has not cost them

Seven games, seven box scores, added up one at a time instead of pulled off a season page: Cincinnati has allowed 856 rushing yards on 177 carries. That is 4.84 a carry. Three of the seven sit at 5.6 or worse — Pittsburgh at 6.0, Miami at 6.4, and Tennessee at 5.6 last Sunday.

Tennessee. The lowly Titans, in Dajani's words. Tony Pollard carried 21 times for 117 yards and two touchdowns with a long of 40. Dexter Lawrence II — the Cincinnati defensive tackle Dubin names as the reason Atlanta's run game stays bottled up — was on the field for all of it, credited with seven tackles.

Cincinnati won that game 43-36.

Read it again, because it is the whole piece. The Bengals got run through for 117 and two scores by a team nobody respects, and still won by seven, because they put up 43.

Everybody picked the fight that resolves itself

Bijan Robinson has 48 carries for 200 yards and no touchdowns across Atlanta's last three games. That is Dubin's number and it checks out: nine for 61 against Chicago, 20 for 63 against San Francisco, 19 for 76 at Tampa Bay. Robinson's last rushing touchdown was October 6.

Miles already took this apart properly, twice. The line allowed no sacks and no quarterback hits at Tampa Bay and Atlanta scored nothing. And the weather excuse Dajani is leaning on died on contact, because Tampa Bay rushed for 324 yards in the same rain while completing zero passes. I am not relitigating either one. Go read them.

My point is narrower. Atlanta's worst rushing stretch of the season is walking into the softest front it has faced in a month. Bijan Robinson is going to get his. Brian Robinson Jr. is questionable with a hamstring, which means the carries are there to be had.

And it is not going to be enough.

The number that actually decides this

Atlanta's points, game by game, all season: 13, 3, 35, 45, 23, 23, 29, 0.

Forty-five points between this team's best afternoon and its worst. That is why two professionals at the same outlet can read one sample and leave with opposite picks. Both answers are genuinely in there. Dajani picked the 45. Dubin picked the 0. Neither of them is being lazy. The team really is both of those things.

Cincinnati is not. The Bengals have gone 33, 20, 27, 17, 31, 35, 43 — 29.4 a game, with their two biggest numbers of the year landing in the last three weeks, Joe Burrow throwing to Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.

Atlanta is averaging 21.4. In its last two games it has scored 29 and nothing.

So the question was never whether Bijan Robinson breaks a hundred. He probably does. The question is whether a 3-5 team averaging 21.4 can reach a number a 5-2 team averaging 29.4 just blew past with 43 — on a neutral field at the Santiago Bernabeu, where Atlanta is the designated home team and nobody is actually home.

Receipts

Two weeks ago I wrote that the loudest voice making Atlanta's case covered the 49ers — that the expert panel said one thing, the betting line said another, and read together they meant Atlanta keep it close and lose.

The line is saying it again. CBS has Cincinnati minus three.

I am not picking the upset and I am not picking the rout. I am telling you which argument to throw out. If you spend Sunday morning reading about whether Atlanta can run on Cincinnati, you are watching the wrong part of the field. They can. Cincinnati has been letting people.

Atlanta is going to rush for a hundred and forty yards, lose by a score, and spend Monday being told the run game is fixed.

Bookmark that.