Jeff Carrico says he saw Kyle Pitts coming. On Sunday, the rest of Kamehameha came with him

Jeff Carrico wants the credit, and he isn't shy about asking for it.

"Did I see Pitts coming? I've been saying it for six weeks, mostly to people who were laughing at me, so yes, I'm taking full credit," the Kamehameha owner told me Sunday night, on the record. "I was out of my seat for both touchdowns."

Those two touchdowns came a week ago, in the 99.32 to 97.56 win that ended Kamehameha's 0-5 start. I have wanted to write about Kyle Pitts since that game. I held off, partly because the most interesting thing about his day was not in the scoring column, and partly because I wanted to hear from the man who keeps putting him in the lineup. Carrico had been quiet all week. Sunday night he answered everything at once.

So here is the profile, a week late and better for the wait.

Start with what the record shows. In Week 6 the Falcons tight end caught five passes for 60 yards, with touchdowns of 10 and 5 yards, for 20.5 points, the best on the roster. I don't know which of those scores came first, or what the scoreboard said when they did, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

The quieter number is the one I keep coming back to. Pitts played 43 snaps that day, about 78 percent of the Falcons' offensive plays, the highest share of his six weeks. In the weeks before, he had come and gone, once playing under 40 percent of it. A tight end who goes from part of the offense to nearly all of it is a story whether he scores or not.

Why it happened is a different question, and a snap count can't answer it. Carrico wasn't going to answer it for me either. "Kyle gets his chances like everybody else," he said. "I'm not putting my game plan in the paper." Fair enough. He did offer his own version of the first month: "The first month was slow and I won't pretend it wasn't, but he kept getting open and the ball finally found him."

"Kept getting open" is the owner's eye, not mine. I wasn't at the games. I watch this team the way most of you do, through the scoring line and the snap counts, and those say a slow month and then a big week. Carrico's version and mine are not far apart.

Then came All Strong. Pitts scored 10.7 points this Sunday, and Carrico said one of Kamehameha's touchdowns was his. "Kyle looked like Kyle," he said. "Big body, gets open." The snap counts for this week aren't out yet, so I can't tell you whether the 78 percent held. That is the question I most want answered, because a role lasts longer than a touchdown.

But the more important part of Sunday happened around him.

Last week I argued, to anyone who asked, that Kamehameha won on two players, Pitts and Chad Ryland, who kicked six field goals. I asked Carrico whether that is how the club is built. He disagreed, and he did it better than most owners do.

"Kyle and Chad won us that game, and I love them for it, but a tight end and a kicker carrying the scoreboard isn't how you build a team, it's how you survive a week," he said. "So no, we're not built around two guys. The rest of the lineup has to catch up. Against All Strong, Jameson Williams caught up. Jaylen, I'm still waiting on you, buddy."

Jameson Williams led the team with 23.6 points. Braelon Allen, starting again with Jeremiyah Love out a second straight game with an ankle injury, had 16.4. Carrico said Williams scored twice and Allen ran for more than a hundred yards; the full game stats aren't posted yet, so those are his figures until I can check them. "Braelon was my guy at running back and he delivered," he said. Jaylen Waddle, the receiver he was calling out by first name, had 6.8.

So the question I kept asking last week, what this team does when Pitts has an ordinary day, got an answer the very next Sunday. Somebody else carried more. That counts for something.

There is the other column too, and Carrico got there before I could. Malik Willis scored 26.62 points on his bench, and Ryland, last week's hero, outscored the kicker who started in his place. "My bench had a better day than half my lineup," Carrico said. "That one's on me." I'll leave it at his sentence. Owners rarely say it that plainly.

None of this is settled. On the league scoreboard Kamehameha trails 106.02 to 87.3, with Dak Prescott left to play Monday night in Philadelphia, and Prescott needs a little under 19 points to put his team in front. "It isn't over, so ask me again Tuesday," Carrico said. "Dak plays Monday night and he knows what he has to do." Tuesday, then.

Here is my reading, and it is only a reading. I have covered enough seasons to be suspicious of the week a struggling team discovers it has a star. That story is usually told too early. A 1-5 club that won by less than two points has found a floor, not a turnaround, and I have said so since that game. Carrico, to his credit, said much the same: "One win doesn't fix 1-5. What it tells me is the parts work when they're all plugged in."

What changed on Sunday is smaller than a turnaround and more useful. Since the first win, the case for Kamehameha has been a tight end, a kicker and a hopeful owner. This week the tight end had an ordinary day, and the team still scored 87.3 with its quarterback yet to play, because a receiver and a running back showed up next to him.

Carrico says he saw Pitts coming, and he has earned the right to say it. What I saw this week was something he has been asking for out loud: a tight end who doesn't have to win the game by himself. On Sunday, he didn't have to.