Falcons 35, Packers 14: The Field Was Unanimous on Green Bay (Unanimously Wrong)
Green Bay was favored, at home, on a short week, and every pundit we tracked took the Packers. The Atlanta Falcons won 35-14 anyway, and the ten graded calls this game settled tell a clean, one-sided story.
The verdict: nobody picked Atlanta
We tracked ten graded calls tied to this game. Nine of them were about who would win — seven final-score predictions and two straight game-outcome picks — and every single one had Green Bay winning. Zero picked the Falcons. That's not a split; it's a shutout, and it went the wrong way. Green Bay was also the home team, which is the naive default this site measures skill against — so nobody was even taking a contrarian swing that could have paid off big. The whole field rode the same horse, and the horse lost by three touchdowns.
The only call this game settled correctly wasn't about the winner at all: Fox Sports's report that Michael Penix Jr. — not Tua Tagovailoa — would start at quarterback for Atlanta graded a clean 100.
The score calls, ranked by how wrong they were
Six pundits put a number on it, and none had the winner right, but the site's scoring still separates a well-calibrated wrong call from a wild one. John Breech had it closest: "Packers 27-13 over Falcons (Thursday)." That graded 33.33 accuracy and a +63 skill swing — the best mark of the group, even in a loss.
Pete Prisco (Packers 27, Falcons 17) and Jared Dubin (Packers 23, Falcons 13, made twice across two separate previews) tied for next-best at 23.81 accuracy and +45 skill apiece. Jordan Dajani had Packers 24-17 (16.67 accuracy, +31.5 skill), and Tyler Sullivan had Packers 26-21 (11.9 accuracy, +22.5 skill).
At the bottom sat Mike Kadlick, who went furthest in the wrong direction with real conviction: "I'm predicting this one ends with Green Bay winning a low-scoring affair, 10–7, to improve to 2–1 on the season. The Falcons, meanwhile, fall to 0–3." Atlanta scored 14 by itself, more than Kadlick's combined total for both teams. That call graded 7.14 accuracy and just +13.5 skill — technically positive, but barely.
The two straight-up outcome picks fared worse, because there's no partial credit for magnitude on a yes/no call. Richard Sherman wrote plainly: "I have the Green Bay Packers winning this game, getting back on track offensively." Green Bay's offense did not get on track. That call graded a flat 0 accuracy, 0 skill. Bill Huber picked the same outcome back on September 13, as part of a longer forecast that had the Packers starting 3-4 through seven games on "a split of the opening four games (wins over the Jets and Falcons)." Also 0 and 0.
What this does and doesn't say about the pundits involved
None of this sinks a season on its own, and the site's own numbers make the point. Breech's plus-63 here beat his season average in the score-prediction category by a wide margin — across 40 graded score calls, he's sitting at 1.66 average skill, so getting rewarded even in a loss makes this one of his better outings, not a representative one. Dubin's two identical picks (+45 apiece) also topped his 5.97 average skill over 29 graded score calls; this was a well-shaped guess that simply had the wrong team winning.
Sherman is the harder case, because his straight-up picking has actually been strong: 73.83% accuracy across 31 graded game-outcome calls, with a +35.49 average skill swing. This game is one of the misses inside that otherwise solid column, not proof the column is broken. Huber's outcome-pick sample is thinner — three graded calls, averaging 66.67 accuracy — which means this was one of only three data points, and it was the bad one.
The bigger picture for these two clubs
Zoom out and the season-long betting on Atlanta and Green Bay is still mostly unsettled with 15 weeks left, but the early returns lean the same way this result does. Among the picks we've graded so far, division-winner calls naming the Packers are averaging just 7.7 accuracy across 13 graded picks, and Green Bay's season win-total calls are running a 60 average with skill below the naive baseline over seven graded picks — both thin samples, worth watching rather than trusting yet. Falcons division-winner picks have graded 0 across nine calls so far, for what that's worth against a team that just won by three scores.
For the full season arc on both clubs, see the Falcons and Packers pages, and see where these pundits and others sit overall on the leaderboard.