# Lions 31, Saints 30: Everybody Picked Detroit, Nobody Saw a One-Point Game

*Published 2026-09-16 — MissedTakes*

Detroit beat New Orleans 31-30 in Week 1. We had 21 graded calls riding on that game — 15 straight-up winner picks and six score predictions — and every single one of them took the Lions.

Nobody was wrong about the winner.

![Saints at Lions: what the field said](/posts/visuals/8e61d933-7a1c-4f02-b24a-2f5e7f8c2316.png)

## The winner picks were free money, and the scoreboard says so

Our skill number measures a pick against the dumbest defensible alternative: just take the home team. Detroit was the home team. Detroit won. So all 15 winner picks graded 100 for accuracy and zero for skill.

That list includes [Pete Prisco](/pundits/pete-prisco), [Kirk Herbstreit](/pundits/kirk-herbstreit), [Conor Orr](/pundits/conor-orr), [Albert Breer](/pundits/albert-breer), [Gilberto Manzano](/pundits/gilberto-manzano), [Mitch Goldich](/pundits/mitch-goldich), [Matt Verderame](/pundits/matt-verderame), [John Pluym](/pundits/john-pluym), [Eva Geitheim](/pundits/eva-geitheim), [Mike Kadlick](/pundits/mike-kadlick), [Dave Dameshek](/pundits/dave-dameshek), [Jason McIntyre](/pundits/jason-mcintyre), [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) and [Ross Jackson](/pundits/ross-jackson). Fourteen names, one answer.

The tone is where it gets interesting, because several of them didn't just pick Detroit — they picked Detroit comfortably. Prisco, two days before kickoff: ["The Saints won't keep up. Lions big."](/opinions/2bb82ce8-249f-4f77-b543-f84d64882973) Breech, back in August, wrote that ["it's hard to see the Saints keeping up."](/opinions/50eb251e-cf6b-417d-a0d6-bccba95e06fc) Herbstreit's version was a statement game: ["I feel like Detroit coming off a disappointing year. They wanna make a statement early... I like Detroit there."](/opinions/5bc3755c-9b84-484f-b8f2-b18d51a12261)

New Orleans lost by one on the road. The result rewarded the pick and repudiated the reasoning.

## The margins, which is where the real grading happened

Six pundits put a number on it. The game finished as close as an NFL game gets, and the baseline — a naive expectation that this game would be roughly a coin flip, home side by half a point — was almost perfect. That meant every score prediction on record here graded below the naive baseline. All six.

![Predicted margin vs. the actual one point](/posts/visuals/34488c82-7666-46f8-bf85-9ba786726340.png)

| Pundit | Score called | Margin | Accuracy | vs. baseline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Matt Dery](/pundits/matt-dery) | Lions 24-20 | 4 | 92.9 | −7.0 |
| Ross Jackson | Lions 27-20 | 7 | 85.7 | −21.3 |
| [Mitchell Eisenstein](/pundits/mitchell-eisenstein) | Lions 34-24 | 10 | 78.6 | −35.6 |
| [Mike Florio](/pundits/mike-florio) | Lions 34-24 | 10 | 78.6 | −35.6 |
| John Breech | Lions 30-20 | 10 | 78.6 | −35.6 |
| Pete Prisco | Lions 33-21 | 12 | 73.8 | −45.1 |

Dery, of Detroit radio, came closest: [Lions 24-20](/opinions/fcf586b4-8b78-41d0-9f73-44a6023b8459), a four-point game that finished by one, and he said out loud he expected New Orleans to cover the 7.5. That's the sharpest read of the game anyone published — he was the only one who priced the Saints as live. Fair warning on how much to make of it: we've graded only four calls from him in total, so this is a promising data point, not a track record.

Prisco's 33-21 was the furthest off, and it's a useful correction to his own numbers. Across the 15 score predictions we've graded from him, he averages 65.7 accuracy and comes out meaningfully ahead of the naive baseline (+26.0). This one graded higher than his average on raw accuracy — 73.8 — and still cost him, because a near-perfect baseline is a brutal opponent. That's not a slump; it's one blowout call in a game that refused to be a blowout. His overall record is 17 graded calls, which is thin enough that one week moves it.

## Ross Jackson had both halves of it in May

The most interesting entry belongs to Jackson, who covers the Saints and sits fifth on [our leaderboard](/leaderboard) with 196 graded calls, 68.9 accuracy and a +26.9 skill score — one of the few people in this piece with a sample big enough to call a record. Back on May 15 he mapped out New Orleans' season game by game and said the Saints ["drop the first two games of the season, that's on the road to the Detroit Lions"](/opinions/479e95ee-26de-4174-8e2c-1d918dc1fc5b), while still projecting 10-7. Four months later he put a number on it: [Lions 27-20](/opinions/6f1d3fc1-2622-4dcb-b63f-f487b45bd1e6).

The outcome call landed. The margin didn't — seven points predicted, one point delivered, 85.7 accuracy and 21 points below baseline. Dameshek got to the same place from the other direction, calling the Saints ["0-2 right out of the gate. They go at Detroit and at Baltimore."](/opinions/d100f663-aa56-421c-abd9-59110859dff2) Half of that is now settled in his favor.

## What it does to the season takes

Not much. A one-point road loss in Detroit is consistent with almost every forecast on the board: Jackson's 10-7 Saints, [John Middlekauff](/pundits/john-middlekauff) calling them a ["10-plus wins"](/opinions/772eb6e7-be6a-4777-a8c3-a781e8a04395) NFC South winner, Breech's 8-9, and [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) taking both [New Orleans and Detroit](/opinions/f2e421a5-e8a4-4e88-8504-cd4ebfec9e5e) as division winners. The Lions bulls — Cowherd and [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal) on the over-10.5, Breech at 12-5 — got a win without getting much evidence.

The one call this genuinely pressured is the 0-2 projection, with Baltimore next on the Saints' schedule. 

Full histories on the [Lions](/nfl/teams/lions) and [Saints](/nfl/teams/saints) pages, and the standings for everyone named above are on the [leaderboard](/leaderboard).