Offset from the FMR (Curti et al. 2020) as a function of the H I column density for the sample of constrained DLAs. Binned averages for N_HI = 10^{21 − 22} cm⁻² and N_HI > 10²² cm⁻² are shown as black diamonds, with 1σ error bars. The average offset from metallicity measurements at z = 9 − 10 (Pollock et al. 2026) is shown in light green. There is only a moderate correlation, with Spearman rank ρ ≈ −0.4, however the strongest DLAs tend to show large offsets from the FMR, as would be expected from pristine gas inflow dilution.