Bills 33, Raiders 30: Just Two Pundits Took Las Vegas, and Neither Had Been Picking Well
Drafted by a language model from MissedTakes' graded data, then reviewed and approved by Ben Garves before publishing. How our posts are made
The Buffalo Bills beat the Las Vegas Raiders 33-30 in Week 6, and the pundits mostly called it right. Of the 22 pundits who logged a winner pick, 20 took the Bills and only two took the Raiders, and the game settled 23 graded calls in all, with an average accuracy of 87 across them. The two who sided with Las Vegas, Conor Orr and Greg Jennings, were already having rough seasons on this exact kind of call before kickoff.
How Lopsided Was the Pick on Buffalo?
Twenty of the 22 pundits with a winner pick on this game took the Bills, and the Bills won. That is close to a unanimous call, and a near-unanimous call that lands is not much of a story by itself, except for who was on the other side of it.
Whose Score Prediction Came Closest?
John Breech and Shanna McCarriston tied for the closest score call, both naming Bills 31-24, a 7-point Buffalo win. The final margin was 3, so both missed by 4 points, the tightest gap among the five pundits who put a score on this game. McCarriston wrote on October 17: "I'm picking the Bills here, but I think the Raiders will have a good fight in them. Pick: Bills 31, Raiders 24," and her call earned an accuracy score of 90.48.
Behind them, Tyler Sullivan called Bills 30-21 (missed by 6 points), Chris Simms called Bills 38-28 (missed by 7), and Pete Prisco called Bills 35-21 (missed by 11) in both of the articles he wrote predicting this score. All five picked the Bills to win, so none of them beat the field's naive home-team pick the way a Raiders score call would have, but each still earned credit for how close the margin came.
Who Took the Raiders, and How Has That Gone for Them?
Only Conor Orr and Greg Jennings backed Las Vegas, and both calls came back with zero accuracy and no credit against the naive baseline. Jennings explained his reasoning on October 16: "And that's the Buffalo Bills. So I'm going with the Raiders... So, yeah, I got the Raiders on upset alert or Bills on upset alert." Orr's pick, published the same day, simply named the Raiders as the winner.
Neither miss is a surprise given their season-long records on this type of call. Orr has 38 graded game-outcome picks this year at 14.36% accuracy, with a MissedTakes Score of -88.78, well below what picking the home team by default would have earned him. Jennings has graded 18 such calls at 45% accuracy and a -17.98 score, also short of that baseline. Both records carry a provisional label given the sample size, but neither man's history gave this particular call much benefit of the doubt.
Did the Correct Picks Extend Anyone's Record?
Pat Fitzmaurice backed Buffalo on October 17, framing it as the start of a stretch: "I think the Raiders are going to make the move after they lose their third straight this week against Buffalo." The call earned full accuracy and a MissedTakes Score of 172, a result that also beat the field's naive home-team pick since Las Vegas was hosting. It's one of only four graded game-outcome calls Fitzmaurice has made this year, where his overall accuracy sits at 50%, so this single hit carries real weight in a thin sample.
McCarriston's score call lifted an otherwise modest mark: she is 58.57% accurate on her five graded score predictions this season, and 90.48 on this one was her best of the group. Several other pundits who simply called the Bills to win straight up, including Rich Eisen, Kevin Wildes, Bobby Bones and Mark Gunnels, made their calls weeks or months before kickoff and still scored 172 to 200, credit for picking a road team over the team the naive approach defaults to.
What This Says About the Rest of Each Club's Season
The result fits a pattern already visible in how these two clubs have been covered. Across all graded game-outcome calls on the Raiders this season, pundits are averaging 63.6% accuracy with a MissedTakes Score of -15.85, below the naive baseline; on the Bills, the averages are 72.3% accuracy and a +73.65 score. A Buffalo win in Las Vegas, largely called correctly, adds to a season where predicting the Raiders has been the harder, and so far less rewarding, half of the matchup. For how these two clubs' seasons are shaping up more broadly, see the Buffalo Bills and Las Vegas Raiders team pages, and the full leaderboard for how this game moved the pundits who called it.