Two First Places, One Division

ESPN's team feed described the Atlanta Falcons this morning as "1st in NFC South." Asked the same question about the Carolina Panthers, it returned the same string. The field that produces that string is called standingSummary, and it does not break ties. It hands first place to every club sharing the best record in a division, which in a division where two clubs sit at 2-2 means handing out first place twice.

That is one error. There are four of them in the published record on this football team, they all run in Atlanta's favour, and the national frame for Sunday night has been built on top of them.

Four fields, one direction

The division-position string is the one that gets quoted, and it is wrong twice over. It does the identical thing in the AFC North, where it calls both Cleveland and Baltimore first -- and the error travels: the brief I started from had taken that field at its word about Sunday's opponent, which is the fifth seed to Cleveland's fourth. A shared record is not a shared position, and the field cannot tell the difference.

Second, games behind. ESPN prints a dash for Carolina and a dash for Atlanta, the notation reserved for a club that trails nobody. Two clubs in one division, neither behind the other, one 1-0 inside it and one 1-1.

Third and fourth, the defensive columns. ESPN's team statistics return 0 for yards allowed and 0 for points allowed, and rank Atlanta Tied-1st in both. Baltimore's read 0 as well, with the same rank. An unpopulated field wearing a first-place rank is the most dangerous shape a bad number takes: it flatters you and cites itself in the same breath.

The real figure is two endpoints away. Atlanta has allowed 20, 34, 14 and 24 points: 92 in four games, 23.0 a game, and ESPN's own standings table carries it, 92 points against, in Atlanta's row. Nothing is missing from the league's data. It is missing from the one field a column can paste.

What the working fields say

The fields that function are unanimous, and not one of them puts Atlanta first. Carolina is the NFC's fourth seed at 2-2, 1-0 in the division, plus-12. Atlanta is the eighth seed at 2-2, 1-1 in the division, plus-4. New Orleans is 14th, Tampa Bay 16th.

Two days ago I wrote that Monday had drawn Atlanta level with Carolina on record, that Carolina still held the head-to-head, and that it sat four seeds higher. The gap is still four seeds. The head-to-head is the half worth returning to, because it is structural rather than current.

Carolina won it 34-3, in Atlanta, on September 20, in the single home game Atlanta has played this season. The Falcons are 0-1 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and 2-1 everywhere else, and the rematch is Week 18 at Bank of America Stadium, in January. Atlanta can still pass Carolina outright by winning more games. What it cannot do, on any Sunday between this one and the last one, is stand level with Carolina and be called first. "Worst to first" is not merely wrong this morning. It describes an arrangement unavailable until the final week of the regular season.

The honest reading, printed whole

Atlanta's differential is plus-4. Take the Carolina game out and the other three are plus-35: 93 scored, 58 allowed. That is the most generous reading the table supports, and the rest belongs in the same sentence -- the game you remove to produce plus-35 is the game that decides the division. One subtraction makes both points. A writer who prints half of it is not reading the table, he is shopping in it.

The scoring curve is the other half. Sixteen points across the first fortnight of the season, 80 across the two weeks that followed, and what changed in between was who took the snap: Atlanta is 0-2 in Cooper Rush's starts and 2-0 in Michael Penix Jr.'s. I published that explanation on October 4 and ESPN's own Week 5 rankings entry arrived at it on the 6th, so I will not argue it twice. The 80 points behind "worst to first" and the 80 points behind a quarterback change are the same 80 points, across eight quarters, both of them played in somebody else's building.

The phrase deserves care, because the outlet that circulated it is not the outlet that asserted it. Falcons On SI's Garrett Chapman wrote on October 6 that the Falcons had launched themselves "from worst to first in the eyes of many in the national media" -- an attribution rather than a claim -- and named ESPN as the outlet describing them that way. Making an error and reporting one are different things. Beneath the phrase he printed four Week 5 power-ranking tables: they disagree about Atlanta, placing it 15th, 19th, 24th and 25th, and they agree about Carolina, which sits at or above Atlanta in all four. That is four tables, not a census. What the national read is most consistent about is the thing the broken field contradicts.

Two tackle entries carry the same word as the ankle

All of that is checkable, and none of it is the most useful thing in the feed this morning.

Atlanta's week has been pointed at an opponent's unresolved ankle. Its own offensive line is carrying something nobody is pointing at. ESPN's depth chart, as published this morning, lists Jake Matthews first at left tackle and Michael Jerrell second -- and lists Jerrell second at right tackle as well. Both appear on the game's injury block as Questionable: Matthews with a groin, entered late Monday night, Jerrell with an ankle, entered Wednesday evening.

Read the configuration rather than the names. The man listed at left tackle and the man listed behind him on both edges carry the same designation in the same week. Jawaan Taylor, listed first at right tackle, is not on the list. Storm Norton, listed fourth at right tackle, and Cameron Williams, listed third at left tackle, carry ESPN's roster tag of "Day-To-Day," which is not an NFL injury designation and I will not convert it into one.

Two limits, both the feed's. That block is capped at five entries a club, so these are not Atlanta's injury report, only its five most recent designations. And nobody can tell you who lines up at either tackle on Sunday; a Questionable tackle is a question about the contingency as much as the starter, and here the contingency carries a designation of his own.

The relevance is schematic, and I argued the substance two days ago rather than re-teach it here. What Atlanta has been in its wins is a running team that keeps the ball: 724 yards on 139 carries, second in the league in both, 5.2 a carry, third in time of possession, and 29th in team passer rating with six interceptions thrown while doing it. An offense weighted that far toward the ground keeps its margin at the edges of the formation, and both of those designations are edge-of-the-formation designations.

The word on the other sideline

Lamar Jackson is listed Questionable with a sprained left ankle, a designation dated Wednesday evening. ESPN's note on his record reads, in full: "The Ravens listed Jackson (ankle) as a non-participant in Wednesday's practice." His head coach, Jesse Minter, in his first year, said on Monday: "I don't know the chances yet." Questionable is the designation that means the question is open, and I will not tell you that he plays or that he does not.

What is settled about Baltimore is that it is 3-1, the fifth seed in the AFC, 116 points scored and 96 allowed, with a team passer rating of 118.4 that ranks second in the league on one interception thrown all season. One weak piece of evidence, offered as weak: New Orleans beat Baltimore 24-17 in Baltimore with Jackson playing, and lost by 21 to Atlanta at Caesars Superdome.

Twelve days ago I argued that the league should leave this game in the Sunday night window. It stayed there: 8:20 on the evening of Sunday, October 11, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the first of three straight home dates against clubs who are a combined 10-2, a figure Dex priced on Monday that has not moved. The quarterback who made that slot worth defending may not take a snap in it.

By Sunday night the division-position string will probably still say what it says, and whoever quotes it will be no more wrong than they are today. What will have been settled is the thing no field in that feed carries: whether a team whose entire case rests on running the ball can run it in its own building, with whichever men are standing at the edges of the formation.