The Answer Was Bijan Robinson

Atlanta's fifteenth offensive play on Thursday night was Bijan Robinson up the middle from the Green Bay 5, and it gained two yards. Nothing about it was remarkable except this: it was the first snap the Falcons had taken inside an opponent's twenty all season.

Wednesday this column argued that the drive charts said Atlanta could not arrive, and that the question worth asking was not what Tommy Rees calls on first-and-goal — he had not had one — but what he calls from the opponent's thirty, where for two games the answer had been the field-goal unit. Thursday supplied the other answer, and it is specific enough to count.

He hands it to Bijan Robinson.

Atlanta took thirteen snaps inside the Green Bay 20. Twelve were runs, eleven of those by Robinson and one by Brian Robinson Jr. Exactly one was a pass from scrimmage — the five-yard touchdown to Austin Hooper from the Green Bay 5, on a possession where Robinson had just lost three yards at the 2. Two other Penix throws inside the 20 were not snaps: one erased by holding, one the two-point conversion. Five red zone trips, four touchdowns. The first-year system's answer to the closest forty feet of the field was the most conventional one available.

Here's what the numbers actually tell you about whether that counts. Thirty-five points can be manufactured without ever testing a red zone — defensive scores, return touchdowns, drives that begin on the opponent's side of midfield. Atlanta had none of those: all thirty-five points came from the offense. Not one of its six scoring drives started in Green Bay territory; two of them started at the Atlanta 8. The shortest went thirty-eight yards, the longest ninety-two. There is no version of this box score where the Falcons scored around the problem instead of through it.

ESPN Research put a frame on the zero that ended: twenty-seven consecutive drives to open a season without a red zone snap, tied with the 1997 Lions for the second-longest such streak in forty-five years. That reconciles exactly with the twenty-five drives counted here on Wednesday plus Thursday's first two, which produced an interception and a punt. The twenty-eighth drive of Atlanta's season was the first one to arrive.

The supporting structure held too, which matters more than the margin. Four hundred ninety-eight yards at 7.5 per play. Two hundred forty-two rushing on forty-one carries. Six of ten on third down, against six of twenty-five across the first two weeks. Zero sacks allowed by a line that had surrendered seven in two games. Michael Penix Jr. went 18-of-25 for 256 yards with a touchdown and an interception, three hundred and twelve days after the knee injury. Robinson carried twenty-nine times for 194 and two scores. Drake London caught nine for 194, including a 68-yarder longer by itself than Atlanta's longest completion in either of the first two games.

Two corrections are owed. The first is in this column's favor: Wednesday's piece declined to name Tommy Rees as the reason the drives stopped, on the grounds that two games of a first-year system produce the same chart whether the calls are wrong, the protection is, or the throws are. Game three produced 498 yards from the same coordinator, which is what withholding judgment is for.

The second is not. This column also argued that Atlanta already knew what it looked like without A.J. Terrell Jr., and that it was the problem. Terrell did not play Thursday — he is on injured reserve with a groin injury and is not eligible until Week 7. His younger brother Avieon did play. Xavier Watts intercepted Jordan Love at the Atlanta 3 inside the final two minutes, and Atlanta held Green Bay to two touchdowns in four red zone trips, including a fourth-and-1 stop at the Atlanta 7 to open the second half. Whatever the secondary is without Terrell, Thursday was not the problem this column said it would be.

Now the part that keeps this honest. Green Bay played without Micah Parsons, without Josh Jacobs — on the commissioner exempt list, not injured — without two starting offensive linemen and without Jayden Reed. That is a real discount and it should be taken. It is also the case that the pressure rate and yards-per-play figures this column cited approvingly on Wednesday, the ones that made Green Bay look like a bad matchup, were themselves compiled without Parsons. The unit Atlanta gashed is substantially the unit that earned those rankings.

One road win does not settle a season, and the yard line where the drives stop is still the number worth watching. It is worth recording where it moved. On Wednesday it was the opponent's 31. On Thursday it was the goal line, four times.