Bears 30, Patriots 24: Every Patriots Score Call Missed by at Least Seven Points

The Chicago Bears beat the New England Patriots 30-24 on a short week in Week 7, and the 23 pre-game calls we graded on the game split roughly the way the final score suggests they should have. Ten of 16 pundits took the Bears to win; six stuck with the Patriots on the road, and all three who attached a score to that pick missed by at least seven points. The field's average accuracy across every graded call on this game came in at 72.

How did the pundits split on Patriots-Bears?

Ten of the 16 pundits with a graded call on this game took the Bears; six took the Patriots. That's not unanimous, but it isn't close either: better than three in five picked the home team that ended up winning by six.

The Bears were also the side the site's naive default favors as the home team, so the ten correct Bears picks scored full marks for accuracy but earned no bonus for beating that baseline. None of the six Patriots backers landed the upset that would have.

Which score predictions came closest?

John Breech and Richard Sherman tied for the closest call, each picking Bears 27-20 and landing within one point of the final margin. Sherman put it this way on his show: "Give me Chicago in this one in a 24, give me 27 to 20 ball game." Breech's write-up read simply: "John Breech's pick: Bears 27-20 over Patriots." Three more Bears backers, Jared Dubin, Jordan Dajani and Tyler Sullivan, each called a four-point Bears win and missed the six-point final margin by two.

Where did the Patriots backers go wrong?

Every pundit who put a score on a Patriots win missed by at least seven points, and the misses got worse the more faith they put in New England's offense. Chris Simms called it a nervous pick before kickoff: "I'm scared, but I'm gonna take the Patriots on the road twenty four twenty one." Mitchell Eisenstein went with a similar number: "I got New England in a close one. Give me them 24-20." Pete Prisco made the same 28-27 Patriots pick in two separate Week 7 columns, citing New England's defense, and both calls graded the same way: an 11-point miss on the margin and an outright wrong winner. On the outcome-only side, Anthony "Tone Digz" DiGuilio and AJ Hawk each took the Patriots to win outright on a TV panel and scored zero accuracy, worse than simply defaulting to the home team would have.

Did this fit these pundits' usual form?

Pete Prisco's two Patriots calls here sit squarely inside his established track record on score predictions, not outside it. Across 122 graded score predictions, his accuracy sits at 54.05 with an average skill score of -5.14, meaning his calls have generally run a little worse than picking the home team by the site's default margin would. This game's pair of 28-27 misses lines up with that history rather than standing apart from it.

John Breech and Richard Sherman, by contrast, both beat their own averages here. Breech's 118 graded score calls carry a 58.79 accuracy and a 5.84 average skill score; his Bears 27-20 call scored well above both. Sherman's smaller sample of 29 graded score calls runs hotter still, 78.65 accuracy and a 25.48 average skill score, and this pick landed right in that range rather than against it.

What does this mean for the rest of each club's season?

The field has had a far rockier time projecting New England's win total than Chicago's this season: pundits' Patriots season win-total calls average just 11.4% accuracy across 14 graded calls, against 66.2% for the Bears across 13. A Patriots loss that drops them to 5-2 and a Bears win that moves Chicago to 6-1 both cut against the shakier New England forecasts and support the steadier Chicago ones. For the full season arc on both clubs, see the Patriots and Bears team pages, and for how these pundits rank once more of the season is graded, the leaderboard.