Saints 34, Giants 27: Only Seven Pundits Saw the Road Win Coming

The New Orleans Saints beat the New York Giants 34-27 on the road in Week 6, and most of the pundits we tracked had it backwards. Thirteen of the 20 pundits who made a call on this game picked the Giants; only seven took the Saints. The average accuracy across the 22 graded calls this game settled was 46 out of 100, a sign the field leaned the wrong way and paid for it.

How did the pundits split on Saints-Giants?

Twenty pundits made a pick, and the home team was the popular one. Thirteen sided with the Giants, seven with the Saints, and the Saints won by seven points. A unanimous call isn't part of this story: it was a real split, and the majority lost.

Four of the seven who took New Orleans did it with a straight winner pick and nothing more: Mike Kadlick, Gilberto Manzano, Matt Verderame and Conor Orr each picked the Saints outright, and each scored full accuracy with a skill value of 172. That number matters here specifically because the naive, no-effort pick for this game was the home team, the Giants. Picking the road winner and getting it right is worth more than another vote for the favorite, and the scoring reflects that.

Which score prediction came closest?

Doug Joubert came closest, calling Saints 21-17 for Showtime Louisiana on October 18 and landing just 3 points off the final margin. Joubert was also the only one of the seven pundits who predicted an actual score to pick New Orleans to win at all; everyone else who named a score had the Giants.

Joubert's call didn't just come closest on the number. It also had the winner right, which is why his score prediction graded out at roughly 93 out of 100 accuracy with a skill value above 100, far ahead of the rest of the score-prediction field on this game.

Which calls missed, and by how much?

Patricia Traina missed by the widest margin among the score predictions, calling Giants 28-17 for a projected 11-point Giants win that instead turned into a 7-point Saints win, 18 points off the actual margin. Among the straight winner-only picks, eight pundits took the Giants and scored zero: Connor Rogers, Tyler Sullivan's outcome pick, Eva Geitheim, Mitch Goldich, Albert Breer, John Pluym, Mitchell Eisenstein and Richard Sherman all had New York. Those zero scores reflect that picking the home team is the default, no-information pick. Getting it wrong earns the same skill value as the baseline would have.

Two preseason calls also landed on this specific matchup months out: Ross Jackson and Dylan Sanders both flagged a Week 6 Saints win back in a May 15 season preview, well before the Week 6 slate existed in most pundits' minds. Both graded to full accuracy with a skill value of 200, credit for a call made with 18 weeks still on the board.

Did this extend or break anyone's streak?

Doug Joubert's hit fits a pattern rather than an outlier for him on score calls specifically: across his two graded score predictions, he's averaging 88.1% accuracy, even though his overall record (62.7% accuracy across 49 graded takes) is dragged down by a weak run of roster-spot calls. Patricia Traina's miss is her second score prediction and her second time missing high on this type; her two graded score calls now average 38.1% accuracy, well below her 46.03% overall mark across 63 graded takes. Ross Jackson's correct outcome pick here sits inside a thin and uneven sample for that type: across seven graded game-outcome calls, he's hitting at 42.86%, even as his broader body of work (240 graded takes) carries an established rating on our leaderboard.

How does this change the outlook for the Saints and Giants this season?

The Saints' win adds to a season where preseason win-total calls for New Orleans ranged from as low as 5-7 wins to as high as 11-6, and this result leans toward the optimists. The Giants' loss drops into a similarly scattered picture: forecasts for New York this season have run from 6-11 to an 11-win division-winner call, and nothing about either team's season is settled this early. Both clubs' full pages carry the complete set of win-total, playoff and division calls still waiting on the rest of the season: the Saints and the Giants. For how the pundits above stack up across everything we've graded, see the leaderboard.