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According to expert picks surveyed by NFL Pickwatch, 100% of observers around the league expect the New Orleans Saints to take down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during their Week 11 road game at Raymond James Stadium.
This is despite New Orleans’ shocking loss at home a week earlier to the lowly Atlanta Falcons, which became just the second dirty birds victory of the year. 100% of the expert picks gathered called for a Saints win in that game, too. In fact, the Saints were one of three teams to have unanimous certainty last week, along with the Indianapolis Colts (who actually lost to the Miami Dolphins) and the Baltimore Ravens (who beat the Cincinnati Bengals).
So obviously this means that the expert picks are sort of meaningless. Football is a great game to watch and study, but nearly impossible to predict. That held true during Thursday Night Football when two-thirds of experts picked the Pittsburgh Steelers to win, but the Cleveland Browns found a way to succeed instead.
For the curious, the Saints are one of two teams with 100% certainty of their success from the experts this week, along with the Oakland Raiders (who play winless Cincinnati). Several other teams come close, including the Minnesota Vikings (99%), San Francisco 49ers (97%), Dallas Cowboys (97%), and Buffalo Bills (96%), but too many contrarian picks — or calculated cuts against the grain — avoid a group consensus. We’ll see soon who ended up picking correctly.
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