Measuring by the stats as of Sunday morning, the league’s highest-scoring offense, New Orleans, met the league’s best scoring defense, Baltimore. Offense won a close, tense battle. Offense has been winning a lot of battles this season: Going into the Monday Night Football contest, scoring per team, per game was up to 24.1 points, versus 21.7 points last season and 21.3 points two decades ago.

In the new NFL’s new normal, does offense best defense? That would reverse a longstanding trend.