Bengals 43, Titans 36: John Breech's Margin Matched, Pete Prisco Missed by 19

Cincinnati beat Tennessee 43-36 in Week 8, and every pundit we graded on the game had it right going in. All 10 picked the Bengals, three of them also predicted a final score, and John Breech's 24-17 call matched the same seven-point margin the game produced.

How did the pundits split on Bengals-Titans?

Ten pundits made a graded call on this game, and all 10 took Cincinnati, according to game_room's pundit-by-pundit count. Not one sided with Tennessee. That makes it a unanimous hit for the group: the Bengals won 43-36, so every one of those ten picks graded correctly.

A unanimous pick on the home team isn't worth much by itself under the MissedTakes Score, which measures how much better than picking the home team a pundit did: seven of those ten pundits, including Rich Eisen, Connor Rogers, Nick Wright, Sam Monson, Richard Sherman and Mitchell Eisenstein, made outcome-only calls with no score attached, so each scored 0 on the MissedTakes Score, right, but no better than picking the home team outright. The three who predicted a score did better or worse than that depending on how close they came.

Which score prediction came closest?

John Breech's call came closest: he had Cincinnati winning 24-17, a seven-point margin that matched the Bengals' actual seven-point win. He said it twice, in separate columns nine days apart, writing "Bengals 24-17 over Titans" on October 27 and repeating the same score on October 29. Both calls scored 100 accuracy with a MissedTakes Score of 25.02, well above the 0 a home-team-only pick earns.

Chris Simms came one point off. On October 30 he said, "I'm going Bengals like I said, but I do think that the Titans kinda hang around... I got twenty eight twenty Bengals in this one." His predicted eight-point margin missed the real one by a single point. The call scored 97.62 accuracy and a MissedTakes Score of 21.18.

Before the score predictions came in, Rich Eisen built his pick on a specific piece of news. On October 30 he said the Bengals, "four and two taking on a Titans team that does not have Jeffrey Simmons, are looking at a five and two start right in the face." The outcome call graded correctly, though without an attached score it earned the same 0 MissedTakes Score as any other home-team pick.

Who missed the margin by the widest gap?

Pete Prisco called the widest margin of the three score predictions, and it cost him the most. On October 28 he wrote, "Pick: Bengals 36, Titans 10." He had the winner right, but his predicted 26-point margin missed the actual seven-point margin by 19 points. That call scored 54.76 accuracy and a MissedTakes Score of -47.82, below what picking the home team alone would have earned.

Do these calls extend or break a run for the pundits involved?

Prisco's miss here falls well below his own numbers. Across 153 graded score predictions, Prisco averages 57.56 accuracy and a MissedTakes Score of 7.65. This call's -47.82 is a steep drop from that average. Breech, by contrast, beat his own numbers: across 150 graded score predictions he averages 59.57 accuracy and a MissedTakes Score of 8.4, so a matched margin worth 25.02 sits well above his typical outing. Simms also outperformed his own line, which sits at 51.91 accuracy and -14.8 MissedTakes Score across 75 graded score predictions.

What are pundits saying about the rest of the Bengals' and Titans' seasons?

Before the season, Breech picked Cincinnati to finish 11-6, a call made twice in early September alongside a 3-14 projection for Tennessee. Nick Wright set the Bengals at nine wins in a September 2 show and put the Titans at six, a number Lane Mills also picked in both August and September win-total calls. Those preseason calls sit among the Bengals' graded win-total record and the Titans' graded takes, both tracked on the pundit leaderboard alongside everything else these pundits have called this season.