Jaguars 19, Eagles 17: 25 Pundits Picked the Winner, But None This Close
The Jaguars beat the Eagles 19-17 in London on Sunday, a two-point game that nobody who predicted a score had pegged as anywhere close. We graded 32 calls across 26 pundits on this matchup, covering who would win and by how much, and the shape of the misses is more interesting than the shape of the hits.
Nearly everyone had Jacksonville, and barely enough of them were right
Game room data, counted one voice per pundit, shows 25 of 26 pundits picked the Jaguars to beat the Eagles. Only one, Kevin Wildes, took Philadelphia. That is about as close to unanimous as this site sees, and the field was right: Jacksonville won, though by a final margin of 2 rather than anything resembling the blowout most of them described.
Every score call overshot the margin
Fourteen pundits projected a score for this game, and all of them had Jacksonville winning by more than the 2 points. The median predicted home margin was 8, four times the real gap. Bryan DeArdo came closest, calling a 16-13 Jaguars win that landed just 1 point off the final margin, writing beforehand that "if Lawrence can handle the pressure, the Jaguars should fly back to the States with a 4-1 record." On the other end, Seth Walder projected a 31-14 Jaguars rout, 15 points off the actual margin, the widest miss of the group.
Picking the Jaguars to win carried no extra credit here since that was simply the home team, the default pick this site's skill score is measured against. The score predictions use a tighter baseline, a Jaguars home margin of well under a point, and DeArdo's 16-13 call beat that baseline enough to add 1.93 to his skill score, the lone positive mark among the 14 scorers. Everyone else who guessed a bigger Jaguars win lost ground relative to that baseline, from a modest dip for Jared Dubin's 23-17 call (-10.79) down to Walder's -57.41 for his 17-point overshoot.
The lone road pick lost too
Wildes was the only pundit willing to back Philadelphia, arguing it came down to "all vibes, all just belief in two Super Bowl champions," Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts, to win "straight up" in London. The Eagles lost, and the call scored a flat zero on accuracy with a skill score of -178. It is not an outlier for him: across 17 graded game-outcome picks this season, Wildes is hitting at 31.67% accuracy, well below where most pundits land on that call type. This game extended a rough stretch rather than breaking one.
DeArdo's strong score call, by contrast, sits oddly against his own record. He has only 2 graded score predictions this season, and his average on that type is still negative (-40.59) because of the other one. Sunday's 16-13 call was clearly his better half of that small sample, not proof of a pattern yet, just 1 good score call against 1 bad one. His outcome picks, though, are 2-for-2 this season at full marks.
Walder's miss fits more easily into a trend. His 17 graded score predictions this season average 59.42% accuracy and a -7.59 skill score, so this 73.81%-accuracy, -57.41-skill call was below his own average, not a one-off collapse from a sharp forecaster. His 20 graded calls overall carry a limited sample size, worth keeping in mind before leaning on his number either way.
What this adds to the season for these two clubs
Jacksonville's season win-total calls have averaged 64% accuracy across 10 graded calls so far, while its playoff-berth calls are running much stronger at 92.3% on 13 graded calls, figures this result does nothing to disturb. Philadelphia's win-total calls, by comparison, are averaging 92% accuracy on 5 graded calls, and every graded division-winner call on the Eagles this season, 22 of them, has landed. A tight road loss in London does not unsettle those bigger-picture calls on its own, but it is another result for each club's record as the season's division and playoff picture firms up. For the full ledger on both clubs, see the Jaguars and Eagles team pages, and for how these pundits stack up across everything they have called this year, the leaderboard.