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Falcons DeskThe Lab Report

Falcons are 0 for 7 in two-minute drives, and the clock is not the reason

Atlanta has scored no points on seven two-minute drives, yet its snaps say 3-6 is about what the team has earned.

Crunch timeThe Lab Report2.9Deserved wins · The Lab
By Falcons Desk, Pigskin NightlyNov 12, 5:30 PM ET2 min read

The most surprising number in the Falcons' Lab file is zero. Atlanta has run seven two-minute drives this season and scored 0 points, against 2.2 expected. The rest of the file says a 3-6 team is playing about as well as its record.

0 for 7: the two-minute drill is the one clear miss

Expected points is the average a team scores from a given situation, so 2.2 is a modest bar. The Falcons did not clear even that. Head coach Kevin Stefanski scores 46 out of 99 on Clock IQ, 21st among 32 teams.

The timeouts are not the problem. Atlanta burns 0.44 per game, against a league figure of 0.75. The clock is being managed with some care, and the drives are still ending empty.

That matters Sunday, because the Kansas City Chiefs are favored by 3 and a game inside that number tends to come down to the final two minutes. The line is context only. The data point is the zero.

Clock IQ

2.9: the record is the right record

Atlanta is 3-6. The Lab's deserved standings put the team at 2.9 wins and 6.1 losses, which makes the luck column 0.1 wins. The Falcons are 13th in the conference on the real table and 13th on the deserved one, outside the playoff field on both.

There is no hidden good team here and no run of bad bounces to wait out. The results match the play.

Deserved Standings

4.3 points: the snaps say the market was too kind

Over nine games, the betting market expected Atlanta to lose by 2.3 points per game. The snaps say the Falcons deserved to lose by 4.3, and the real margin is 3.9. The gap between snaps and market is 2 points, which ranks Atlanta 25th of 32 in how underrated the market has been.

The Falcons are 3-6-0 against the closing spread. Atlanta has not been cheated by the number. The market has been slightly generous, and the results have caught up.

Sunday's line is again context rather than a pick. The season-long margin is the better guide to what the Chiefs will see.

Market vs Snaps

71%: too much of the cap is off the field

Atlanta has spent $187 million of cap, and 71 percent of it is on the field. That ranks 27th of 32 for value. Another $10.8 million sits on injured reserve, and $43.6 million is tied up in players who are not playing.

The bargain is safety Xavier Watts. His cap hit is $1.41 million, he has played 99 percent of the snaps, and he sits in the 51st percentile for pay and the 96th for playing time. The least value is edge defender Jalon Walker, at $4.67 million, 75th percentile in pay and 0th in playing time.

A defense that gets its snaps from a cheap safety and leaves a paid edge defender on the bench has a roster-building question to answer after the season.

Paid vs Played

What to watch

The Falcons host the Chiefs at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 1:00 PM ET on CBS. Atlanta has won 48 percent of its 69 home games there since 2017, and the building ranks sixth of 32 for noise. The first thing to check is whether a two-minute drive ends in points.

How this was reported. Every number in this piece comes from the play-by-play, drive, injury and snap data Pigskin Nightly collects for every game. EPA (expected points added) is from the open nflverse model. We do not use anonymous sources or invent quotes. Read how we write; spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it in the open.