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USATSI

We're more than halfway through the 2022 NFL season now, and for the Week 10 edition of Thursday Night Football, we have the Atlanta Falcons traveling to Charlotte to take on the division rival Carolina Panthers. 

These two teams met just two weeks ago and turned in a surprisingly-entertaining contest, and hopefully for the viewing audience, we get something like the same sort of thing on Thursday night. If Atlanta can secure a win, it will at least temporarily move into first place in the division with a 5-5 record, pending what happens with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers take on the Seattle Seahawks in Germany on Sunday morning. A Panthers victory would really muddle the standings in the South, as every team would then have either three or four wins. 

Both teams are coming off losses a week ago, so which of them will find a way to get back in the win column? We'll find out soon enough. Before we break down the matchup, here's how you can watch the game on Thursday evening.

How to watch

Date: Thursday, Nov. 10 | Time: 8:20 p.m. ET
Location: Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte, North Carolina)
Stream: Amazon Prime Video   
Follow: CBS Sports App 
Odds: Falcons -2.5, O/U 42.5

When the Falcons have the ball

We know at this point what the Falcons are about offensively: They want to run the ball early, often, and basically all the damn time. On the season, they have called for a pass on just 42.3% of their offensive snaps -- the second-lowest rate in the NFL behind only the Chicago Bears. Incredibly, despite everything we know about how to drive efficient offense in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-two, the Falcons are still ranked inside the league's top 10 in EPA per play. (They're tied for ninth with the Seattle Seahawks.) 

Cordarrelle Patterson returned to the lineup last week, giving Atlanta a three-man rotation in the backfield alongside rookies Tyler Allgeier and Caleb Huntley. Patterson looked pretty good against the Chargers, handling 14 touches and gaining 53 yards while scoring twice, and also having a long touchdown called back by a dubious penalty. Allgeier broke a long run (44 yards) last week, and Huntley averaged nearly 5 yards a pop. Marcus Mariota is a big contributor in the run game as well, both on designed rushing attempts and as a scrambler. The Panthers have allowed the league's fifth-most rushing yards overall, though that has mostly been a function of volume as they're been trailing for a significant majority of the season. 

Atlanta's passing attack is based almost entirely around play-action, and is funneled through two players. Mariota has faked a hand-off on 41.1% of his dropbacks, according to Tru Media, the second-highest rate in the NFL behind only Tua Tagovailoa. That's the second-highest rate not just this season, but at any time in the past five seasons. Other than Mariota and Tagovailoa this year, and Tagovailoa last year, no quarterback has used play-action on more than 35% of their dropbacks during that span. 

When Mariota does throw, it's almost always in the direction of Kyle Pitts or Drake London, who have drawn 102 combined targets on Mariota's 201 passing attempts. He's struggled to form all that efficient a connection with either one of them, as Pitts has a catch rate of just 50% and London's is at 59%, but they are dangerous, dynamic weapons who can get the better of their matchups athletically. The Panthers have done well against No. 1 wide receivers this season, ranking fifth in Football Outsiders' DVOA, but are just 28th on throws to tight ends. This might therefore be more of a Pitts game than a London game. 

When the Panthers have the ball

P.J. Walker will be back under center for the Panthers this week despite his horrendous showing against the Bengals a week ago, wherein he completing just 3 of 10 passes for 9 yards and was intercepted twice. Before that, Walker had gone 50 of 80 (62.5%) for 614 yards (7.7 per attempt), three touchdowns, and one pick, which is solid, if not necessarily spectacular. It was, however, an obvious improvement over what Baker Mayfield had been providing, which is presumably why Walker got to keep his job for at least another week.

Walker had also formed a far stronger connection with D.J. Moore than Mayfield ever did, and that's important because after the trade of Christian McCaffrey, Moore is by far the best playmaker on this offense. In Mayfield's five starts, Moore caught just 17 of 37 passes thrown in his direction, for 197 yards and one touchdown. Prior to last week, he'd caught 16 of 28 passes from Walker, for 228 yards and two scores. With top Falcons corner A.J. Terrell still out of the lineup, Moore should have a chance to make some plays through the air in this contest. 

The Panthers would also likely rather run the ball than throw it, though, and Atlanta has been slightly better on run defense this season than it has against the pass. Whether the Falcons can bottle up D'Onta Foreman like the Bengals did last week (7 carries for 23 yards after back-to-back 118-yard performances against the Buccaneers and these same Falcons), we shall see. Chuba Hubbard may return to the lineup for this game as well, as he's been listed as questionable after sitting out each of the last two weeks. 

After this matchup shockingly turned into a shootout (37-34) a couple weeks back, it wouldn't be surprising to see a much more muted affair this time around. The second matchup between divisional opponents in a given season generally tends to be lower-scoring than the first, and in a game where run efficiency is likely to determine the outcome, we like the odds better for the Falcons than the Panthers. 

Prediction: Falcons 20, Panthers 16