# Vikings 23, Buccaneers 16: The Field Bet on Tampa Bay, and Two Road Picks Beat the House

*Published 2026-09-29 — MissedTakes*

Minnesota went into Tampa Bay and won 23-16, and the pundits we tracked leaned the other way. Ten graded calls settled this one — three straight winner picks and seven final-score predictions — and six of the ten had the Buccaneers finding a way to beat a division favorite at home. They didn't.

## The verdict: a losing majority

Split by call type, the miss was concentrated in the score predictions. Of the seven pundits who put a number on the board, five (**Derek Brown**, **Pat Fitzmaurice**, **Jordan Dajani**, **Pete Prisco**, **John Breech**) took Tampa Bay, and only two (Jared Dubin and Tyler Sullivan) took Minnesota. Among the three straight winner picks, it split 2-1 for the Vikings: Tracy Sandler and Richard Sherman had it right; Carmen Vitali didn't.

![Vikings 23, Buccaneers 16 — every score prediction graded](/posts/visuals/794bab05-8035-4e31-aa2a-bd0224d76d25.png)

## The calls that beat the house

Every winner pick here graded against a home-field default that favored Tampa Bay, which means the two correct road picks weren't just right — they were worth more than picking the favorite would have been.

Sandler's take came with a confession: "Well, I had picked Tampa Bay earlier in the week, but Carmen has convinced me that they're going to lose, so I'm now going with the Vikings." It graded a perfect 100 accuracy and a 189 skill score — a full swing from favorite to correct underdog inside the same week.

Sherman's pick was more direct: "So I got the Vikings and Brian Flores making Baker Mayfield's life hell... I got the Vikings continuing on 3-0." Same grade — 100 accuracy, 189 skill.

Vitali's miss leaned on the obvious: "I'm going to take Tampa. They're at home... in the heat, I'm going to give it to them." Home field and heat weren't enough; it graded zero.

On the score side, Jared Dubin had the number of the week. His prediction — "Vikings 23, Buccaneers 17" — nailed Minnesota's total exactly and missed Tampa Bay's by a single point. That graded 97.62 accuracy and a 119.39 skill score, easily the best call this game produced. Tyler Sullivan wasn't far behind: his call of "Vikings 23, Buccaneers 21" also hit the Vikings' total on the nose and graded 88.1 accuracy.

## The misses, fairly stated

The five Tampa Bay score calls clustered on the same idea — a close Buccaneers win — and all missed by wide margins once Minnesota pulled away by seven. Brown's prediction of a Bucs win by three graded 40.48 accuracy; Breech's call of "Buccaneers 19-16" graded the same, 40.48, though it's worth a nod that his 16 points for Tampa Bay matched the Buccaneers' actual total — just assigned to the wrong side of the box score. Fitzmaurice, Dajani and Prisco all called Tampa Bay by one point and graded identically at 35.71.

## What it means for the pundits behind the calls

Dubin's standout call comes from a thin, uneven ledger: 42 graded calls overall, 51.33% accuracy, and a modest average skill score of 2.19 on score predictions specifically. This one call's 119.39 skill is nowhere near his own baseline — a clear outlier in a good way, not (yet) a pattern.

Sherman's hit extends a solid game-outcome record: 73.95% accuracy across 42 graded winner picks, one of his stronger categories. It also sits alongside a rougher patch this season — a season-opening pick on Seattle over New England graded among the site's worst calls of the year, 0 accuracy and a -200 skill score. This week's Vikings call was the better version of Sherman showing up.

Fitzmaurice and Brown are both top-five names on our overall leaderboard, but neither had a track record in score predictions before this: it was the first graded score call for each. Their misses here don't interrupt anything — they're the first entry.

## Beyond this one game

The lean toward Tampa Bay in this game fits a wider pattern in the calls we've graded on these two clubs: pundits have hit on just 38.1% of graded winner picks involving the Buccaneers, against 66.7% for the Vikings, and season win-total calls tell a similar story — 81.8% accuracy on Vikings win totals against 43.3% on the Buccaneers'. None of that is destiny for the rest of 2026, but it's the record so far. Full pages for both clubs are at Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the leaderboard has the rest of the field.