Patriots 29, Bills 26: Only Two Pundits Picked the Upset at Highmark
New England went into Highmark Stadium as a six-and-a-half-point underdog against a 3-0 Bills team and won anyway, 29-26. We tracked 36 graded calls on this one — winner picks and score predictions alike — and the room was about as lopsided as a Week 4 game gets.
The verdict: 30 of 32 took the Bills
Counting one voice per pundit, the field split 30 to 2 for Buffalo. The average grade across every call the game settled came out to 25 out of 100 — a bad night for anyone who had an opinion on this game.
A 30-2 split isn't quite unanimous, which makes it a more interesting story than a plain shutout would be. Two voices broke from the room entirely, called New England outright, and turned out to be the only ones worth listening to.
The two who saw it coming
Greg Jennings picked the Patriots as his upset special for the week: "they come out of Highmark giving the Buffalo Bills a first loss." Kevin Wildes backed him up the same week: "I will add to Greg's pick Patriots over Bills straight up."
Both calls graded out at 100 accuracy, and both are worth more than a coin-flip win. Picking the home team is the free move here — Buffalo was 3-0 and favored — so the naive, give-everyone-credit-for-the-chalk baseline gave neither of them anything for taking New England. Jennings' call scored +183 on our skill measure and Wildes' scored +183 as well, both well clear of zero, which is what beating that baseline looks like. A road-team pick that lands is worth more than one more voice on the favorite, and this is what that looks like in the numbers.
It's not a blind swing, either. Jennings had also been on the Patriots to win the AFC East back in August and again in early September — "I believe they'll win the division" — so Sunday's call fits a standing view of this team, not a one-off guess.
Everyone else had the winner wrong
The other 30 pundits all took Buffalo, including every pundit who went further and guessed an exact score. Thirteen score predictions were logged for this game, and every single one had the Bills winning — meaning all 13 missed the final result before the margin was even in play. Nick Wright was the furthest off: "The Bills, 31. The Patriots, 13. This one is not close, and it is panic time in New England," which graded at 14.3 accuracy and a skill score of -56.6, the single worst call of the group. He'd also called it on his outcome pick: "I think the Bills are going to slaughter them."
Even the closest score calls were closest only in margin, not in outcome. Eric Moody's "Bills 30, Patriots 27" and Jeremy Pargo's "Bills 24-21" both had Buffalo winning by 3 — the same spread as the actual result, just pointed the wrong way — and both missed the final home margin by 6 points once you account for the flipped winner. The median predicted margin across the room was Bills by 8; the Patriots actually won by 3.
Track records: one real miss, two live hits
Wright's whiff here is the outlier, not the pattern. Across 162 graded game-outcome calls, he's right 60.2% of the time, an established record built on a much bigger sample than one bad Sunday — this was a bad call, not a bad body of work.
Jennings and Wildes are a different story. Jennings is right on just 43.8% of his 16 graded outcome picks, and Wildes sits at 35.2% on his 16 — both below a coin flip overall, with limited-to-provisional sample sizes. Sunday's correct call doesn't erase that; it's one hit in a thin, uneven record, and the next few weeks will say more about whether either of them is actually onto something with New England or just caught one.
What it touches beyond this game
The Patriots' win doesn't settle anything about the division — among the AFC East calls we've tracked for 2026, Buffalo has been picked to win it far more often than New England has, and preseason win-total calls mostly had New England in the 9-to-10-win range, missing the playoffs. One result at Highmark doesn't flip that consensus, but it's a data point against it, and it's the same case Jennings has been making since August.
For the full picture on either team, see the Patriots and Bills pages, and check the leaderboard to see where this week left the pundits who called it.