Jaguars 35, Patriots 6: The Field Got the Winner Right and the Game Completely Wrong
Jacksonville's 35-6 win over New England settled 13 graded calls on MissedTakes. Ten of them backed the Jaguars. All ten were right. The three that backed the Patriots were not. On the simple question of who wins, the field got this one comfortably correct. On the size of it, not one graded call came close.
The verdict: lopsided, and mostly right
The 13 calls split 10-3 for Jacksonville. Every pundit who predicted a final score also had Jacksonville winning — the disagreement was only ever about margin, and even there nobody envisioned anything like a 29-point final gap. The three picks that missed entirely were straight winner calls on New England.
That lopsidedness matters for how much credit the correct picks actually deserve. Jacksonville was the home team, which made it the naive default pick before anyone watched a snap. Every pundit who took the Jaguars to win scored 100 accuracy but a flat zero on MissedTakes Score — the number built specifically to separate "picked the favorite" from "showed skill." Nobody in this game beat the baseline. Getting the winner right here was the floor, not an achievement.
The calls worth naming
The most specific pre-game case came from Carter Bahns, who reasoned through recent form rather than just picking the home side: "The Jacksonville Jaguars have lost consecutive games just once since 2024 and could put up a number New England cannot match in this contest between 1-1 squads." Geoff Schwartz was blunter: "I am way more confident than you are in this game. I'm taking Jacksonville for five tips here." Richard Sherman kept it simple — "I got the Jacksonville Jaguars winning this game" — and Rich Eisen had this flagged all the way back on August 19: "Now you're home for the Patriots. Win."
All four were correct. None of them beat the baseline, because none of them were betting against the home team.
The six pundits who put a number on it all undersold the beating badly:
Nick Wright had it closest in spirit at Jaguars 24, Patriots 17 — a 7-point margin against an actual 29. Tyler Sullivan projected the tightest score of the group, Jaguars 23-21, just a 2-point margin. Every one of those six scored 50 accuracy and zero skill for getting the winner right without sniffing the margin — this was a week where "competitive game" was the consensus read on a game that wasn't one.
The misses
Three pundits took New England, and all three lost the same way. Chris Broussard went furthest out on the limb: "The Patriots beat the Jags. Let's go. That's a guarantee." It graded to 0 accuracy and a -189 skill hit. Danny Parkins hedged going in — "so I'll take the Patriots over the Jaguars, but not for a ton of confidence" — and still landed in the same place. Mark Wahlberg, previewing the Patriots' full schedule back on September 3 as part of a projected 14-3 season, had this as a win: "Two and o at the Jacksonville Jaguars. We're winning that game." That one graded to -200, the steepest hit of the three.
What this does to the record
Broussard's miss extends a pattern rather than interrupting one — he's now 29 graded takes into the season at 47.17% accuracy and a -9.32 MissedTakes Score overall, with his 19 graded game-outcome picks running at 54.76% accuracy and a -11.23 score. This "guarantee" fits the season he's had on outcome calls, not an outlier from one.
Sherman's correct pick is a truer bounce than it looks: across 120 graded takes this season he sits at 58.31% accuracy and an 18.14 score overall, with his 42 graded outcome picks running hotter still, at 73.95% accuracy and a 14.79 score. He's a pundit who picks winners reliably — this one just didn't happen to test that skill, since the winner was also the favorite.
Schwartz's confident call is the more interesting case. His overall record is rough — 25.83% accuracy and a -35.44 score across seven graded takes — and his three graded game-outcome picks sit at just 33.33% accuracy. The bravado in "way more confident than you are" reads differently against a ledger where two of his last three outcome calls have missed.
Beyond this game
This result lands in the middle of a pile of still-unresolved 2026 forecasts for both clubs. Multiple pundits have New England finishing anywhere from 9-8 to 14-3 and winning the AFC East; others have Jacksonville repeating as AFC South champions on 10-to-13 win paces. None of those are settled by one Week 3 laugher, but a 35-6 final does not make the Patriots' bullish call any easier to keep believing, and it's one more data point for everyone who bet on Jacksonville. Across all their graded takes this season, Jaguars-related calls are running 57% accuracy with a 14.92 average skill score, against 69.8% accuracy and 40.92 skill for Patriots-related calls — a gap this game cuts squarely against. For the season-long view, see the Jacksonville Jaguars and New England Patriots team pages, and check the leaderboard to see how this week moved the standings.