There’s quite a history of analysts from particular media outlets all picking a game one way and then getting roasted when they’re wrong, sometimes even by the teams or athletes involved. The latest case comes from the New Orleans Saints’ Sunday Night Football 38-3 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Sunday pregame shows from NBC, ESPN and NFL Network all unanimously picked the Buccaneers, as Nader Mirfiq pointed out on Twitter during the game:
https://twitter.com/Nader723/status/1325623753980710912
And after the game, the Saints shared a video of those three shows’ picks:
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) November 9, 2020
It’s understandable for some people to pick the Bucs at home, but it’s sort of surprising that every single analyst went that way. This was a matchup of 5-2 New Orleans and 6-2 Tampa Bay, so relatively even on the record side, and the Saints had won the first meeting between the teams back in Week 1.
Even beyond that, this is another endorsement for the long-running theory that one member of a panel should always go against a unanimous selection to avoid getting memed afterwards (an argument made by many people over the years; Moon Crew’s Jason Kirk delivered a good take on it last month). If most of the prognosticators on these networks had picked the Bucs but it hadn’t been unanimous, this wouldn’t get as much attention. But every member of three network pre-game shows all selecting one team, a team that then loses by 35 points? Yeah, that’s going to get talked about.
[Nader Mirfiq on Twitter]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.