Bengals 31, Dolphins 24: All 15 Tracked Pundits Took Cincinnati, Only One Hit the Margin
Cincinnati's 31-24 win at Miami in Week 5 didn't divide the pundits we track at all. Fifteen separate voices made a call on this game before kickoff, across score predictions and straight winner picks, and all fifteen took the Bengals. None took the Dolphins. That's as close to a unanimous read as this site sees.
A clean sweep like that isn't much of a test by itself, since picking the better team to beat a rebuilding Miami squad at home isn't a bold stance. But consider what the unanimous pick was up against: the Dolphins were playing at home, and our scoring baseline (which simply defaults to the home team) actually leaned toward Miami by a hair before anything else was factored in. Every one of the 15 calls went against that default anyway, and every one was right. The field's average accuracy on this game came out to 94 out of 100, well above what a coin flip or a home-team autopilot would have produced.
The margin was the real contest
Picking the winner was easy. Picking the final score was not, and that's where the separation happened. Thirteen pundits put a specific score on the board, and their predicted Dolphins-minus-Bengals margins ranged from -3 to -14 against a final margin of -7.
Dan Parr called it exactly: Bengals 20-13, a predicted margin of -7 that matched the final 31-24 margin point for point, for a 100 accuracy score. John Breech and Jordan Dajani were a single point off, both landing on Bengals 24-16 (a -8 margin) for 97.62 accuracy apiece.
On the outcome-only side, Mike Kadlick and Richard Sherman didn't name a score but both picked Cincinnati outright against the home-team default, which is exactly what the skill number is built to reward: each scored a perfect 100 accuracy and a 178 skill delta, the biggest swings tied to this game. Kadlick's reasoning leaned on the Bengals' health advantage: "Even with Chase still in concussion protocol ... this one could quickly become a blowout by the Bengals." Sherman put it more simply: "Yes, I think Cincinnati Bengals get back in the winning column."
Everyone had the winner, not everyone had the game
Nobody picked the losing side here, so there's no "wrong team" miss to report. The misses that exist are all about scale. Bobby Kownack's call of Bengals 28-14 (a -14 margin) was the furthest off among the score predictions, missing the actual margin by 7 points for an 83.33 accuracy score, the lowest of the bunch. A cluster of others, including Jeremy Pargo, Tyler Sullivan and Pamela Maldonado, landed 4 points off the actual margin. None of that cost anyone the correct side of the game; it's the difference between a very good week and a merely good one.
What this game does to each pundit's record
Parr's exact-margin call was a standout against his own season so far: across 24 graded score predictions this year he's sitting at 67.18 accuracy, so Sunday's call was close to his ceiling, not his norm, and it's part of a broader record that remains provisional at 26 graded takes overall.
Kadlick's perfect outcome call is a sharper contrast. His season-long accuracy sits at 35.27 with a negative overall skill score (-30.31), and his outcome picks specifically have hit only 31.25% of the time across 20 graded calls. This Bengals pick was one of his better weeks, not a sign of a hot streak.
Sherman's hit fits his pattern better. His outcome picks specifically run 66.99 accuracy across 69 graded calls, the strongest of the several prediction types in his record, so a correct Bengals call lines up with where he's been reliable rather than interrupting anything.
Kownack's overshoot on the margin also tracks with his season: 43.62 accuracy and a thin positive skill score (3.18) across 27 graded calls, with his score predictions alone sitting at 59.06 accuracy. The size of his miss here is in line with a pundit who's picked the right side more than the right scoreline this year.
Beyond this game
The loss keeps alive a run of pessimistic season calls on Miami: several pundits we've tracked, from Carter Bahns to Jared Dubin to Bill Simmons, have floated a winless Dolphins season, and nothing about a 24-point output in a loss argues against that read. On the other side, Cincinnati's win is a point in favor of the more optimistic 2026 calls on the Bengals, including John Breech's preseason 11-6 projection and Nick Wright's nine-win line. For the full season arc on both clubs, see the Dolphins and Bengals team pages, and for how these pundits stack up across everything they've called this year, the leaderboard has the full ranking.