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

*Published 2026-11-02 — MissedTakes*

*Drafted by a language model from MissedTakes' graded data, then reviewed and approved by Ben Garves before publishing.*

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](/nfl/games/2026-week-8-titans-at-bengals)'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.

![All 10 pundits we tracked sided with Cincinnati](/posts/visuals/de02ae44-a787-4932-acda-b9a7d02f5ce4.png)

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](/pundits/rich-eisen), [Connor Rogers](/pundits/connor-rogers), [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright), [Sam Monson](/pundits/sam-monson), [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman) and [Mitchell Eisenstein](/pundits/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"](/opinions/2c56260f-14b4-4708-b8e0-c7a2b156d964) on October 27 and repeating the same score on [October 29](/opinions/a57cb0eb-708d-41aa-9bb8-dbc16f7d3ded). Both calls scored 100 accuracy with a MissedTakes Score of 25.02, well above the 0 a home-team-only pick earns.

[Chris Simms](/pundits/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."](/opinions/257149d0-81ab-4feb-a725-ef5bebba04b0) 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](/pundits/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."](/opinions/bf68856c-5746-4414-91a9-e50a4d770332) 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](/pundits/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."](/opinions/0e9d8078-8a3c-4465-92a9-e73302d4a67c) 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.

![Breech's margin matched, Prisco's missed by 19](/posts/visuals/0a75de46-59bf-4755-9135-2dc84917ab18.png)

## 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](/pundits/pete-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](/pundits/john-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](/pundits/chris-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](/nfl/teams/bengals) and [the Titans' graded takes](/nfl/teams/titans), both tracked on [the pundit leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard) alongside everything else these pundits have called this season.