Raiders 35, Saints 27: The Field Picked New Orleans 11-to-1, and the One Holdout Cashed

The Las Vegas Raiders went into New Orleans and won 35-27, and by the time the final whistle blew, the site had twelve graded calls on this game. Eleven of them had the New Orleans Saints winning their home opener. Exactly one had the Raiders. The one voice going the other way was right.

The verdict: 11-1 for the home team, and the home team lost

This wasn't a coin-flip game as pundits saw it — it was close to a consensus. Score predictions, survivor picks, straight-up winner calls: all but one landed on New Orleans. That's the kind of lopsided split that makes a road win worth more than the raw box score suggests, because picking against a near-unanimous field and getting paid is exactly what separates a sharp call from just restating the home-field default.

The call that got paid

Chris Broussard was the only graded voice on this game to take Las Vegas: "And then the second one, Hubs, you'll love this one. Raiders over the Saints." That's it — no hedge, no margin, just the winner. It graded at 100 accuracy and a skill score of +189, because the naive play here was New Orleans at home, and Broussard's pick beat that baseline outright rather than just riding it.

It's worth being honest about what that call sits inside, though. Broussard's overall record on the site is 29 graded calls at 47.17 accuracy and a −9.32 MissedTakes Score, still provisional, with his three graded score predictions running to just 29.37 accuracy. This win is his best game-outcome call of the stretch (his game-outcome line now sits at 54.76 accuracy over 19 graded picks) — not a hot streak revealing itself, one correct pick standing out against a thinner record.

The misses, and the shapes they took

Every score prediction on this game had New Orleans winning, so all eight missed the winner, but they didn't all miss by the same amount. Since the actual final was 35-27 Raiders — margin 8 — the closest reads by the site's grading were Pete Prisco ("Saints 21, Raiders 14," 47.62 accuracy, skill +29.39) and Lance Moore ("Saints 27, Raiders 20," also 47.62 accuracy, skill +29.39). Darrion Gray ("Final score, I'm gonna go 27 to 17, Saints") and John Hendricks ("I think it'll be more like a 24, 19 game… I think the Saints are gonna win") followed close behind. Nick Wright's "New Orleans 21, Raiders 20" was the tightest predicted margin of the group and also the lowest-scoring outcome of the set, at 33.33 accuracy.

On the straight winner picks, Richard Sherman was the most specific: "Give me the Saints in this game. Give me the Saints by three." It graded 0 accuracy — no partial credit for a losing pick, margin or not. That's a rare miss in this category for Sherman, whose game-outcome record on the site otherwise runs 73.95 accuracy across 42 graded picks; this one doesn't say much about his eye for games generally, just that this particular Saints read didn't hold.

Dan Beyer took New Orleans as his Week 3 survivor pick, reasoning "I don't see the Raiders as still being unbeaten" — also a miss. And Ross Jackson, who carries an established, 230-take record built mostly on roster and mock-draft calls, had picked the Saints to win this home opener all the way back in May as part of a full-season Saints projection. It's one of only three graded game-outcome calls in his ledger (33.33 accuracy there), a category far outside where his track record actually shines — his roster-spot calls run 96.07 accuracy, his mock-draft calls 63.2 across 142 graded picks.

What it touches beyond this one game

Across the season so far, the site has graded 247 Raiders-related takes at 70.6 average accuracy and 380 Saints-related takes at 63.0 average accuracy — this result adds one more data point to each ledger, on the side of the pundits who back Las Vegas over the pundits leaning on New Orleans at home. Anyone still holding a Saints division or playoff pick built on winning this kind of game got a data point against it this week; anyone on the Raiders got one in their favor.

For the season-long view of who's actually calling these games well, see the leaderboard, and check the Raiders and Saints pages for the full run of graded takes on both clubs.