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Lance Zierlein· Sep 11, 2026

Lance picked the Texans to beat the Bills in the season opener, settling on a final score of 23-17 after initially saying 23-16.

“Texans beat him, 23 to 16. Okay. 23. No. That's four scores. I'm gonna go I'll go twenty three seventeen.”

said on air, transcribed by us · John and Lance — ESPN Houston (podcast) · read the original →

One checkable claim, graded on its own against what actually happened.

The call scored 47.6 out of 100, against 36.8 for a naive guess at the same calls.

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Each one is scored on its own against the published methodology. A pundit naming several outcomes is graded on each, not on all-or-nothing.

  • Score PredictionsHouston TexansSep 11, 2026

    Houston Texans 23 — Bills 17

    “Texans beat him, 23 to 16. Okay. 23. No. That's four scores. I'm gonna go I'll go twenty three seventeen.”

    Close · 48Scored 47.62a naive guess scored 36.83+21.59 skill
    How this was scored
    score:
    36-31
    skill:
    21.59
    they picked:
    HOU
    season:
    2026
    accuracy:
    47.62
    baseline:
    36.83
    difficulty:
    2
    weeks in the season:
    18
    actual margin:
    5
    weeks left when called:
    18
    naive home margin:
    -0.53
    predicted margin:
    6

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