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It’s officially Week 1 which means that it’s the last time for people to get their predictions for the 2019 season in. That’s not shocking by any means.
NFL predictions can often be a funny thing. You think you know so much about the way that a season is going to go and then a team or sometimes even just one individual player come out of nowhere and change everything that you thought you knew. Football can be funny like that.
Sometimes predictions aren’t even made by people. We live in a day and age in 2019 where we run computer simulations for everything and those are certainly a bit more interesting than predictions that come from people who think the Cowboys will miss the playoffs AND that Jacoby Brissett will be third-best in the MVP race this season.
ESPN predicted the entire Cowboys schedule
ESPN ran a computer simulation 20,000 times for the 2019 NFL season. This simulation included results for every week of the season which obviously includes how the Dallas Cowboys will fare in each game.
We can all look at the Cowboys schedule and say that we think they’ll win this game, drop that one, so on and so forth. Here’s what the technology inside the worldwide leader thinks:
ESPN’s predicted result for 2019 Cowboys
| Cowboys Opponent | Predicted Result | Predicted Score | Record To Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cowboys Opponent | Predicted Result | Predicted Score | Record To Date |
| New York Giants | Win | 20-17 | 1-0 |
| at Washington Redskins | Loss | 18-21 | 1-1 |
| Miami Dolphins | Win | 38-33 | 2-1 |
| at New Orleans Saints | Loss | 29-48 | 2-2 |
| Green Bay Packers | Loss | 22-27 | 2-3 |
| at New York Jets | Loss | 3-20 | 2-4 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | Win | 29-24 | 3-4 |
| at New York Giants | Win | 23-20 | 4-4 |
| Minnesota Vikings | Lose | 10-24 | 4-5 |
| at Detroit Lions | Win | 35-10 | 5-5 |
| at New England Patriots | Lose | 13-23 | 5-6 |
| Buffalo Bills | Win | 30-20 | 6-6 |
| at Chicago Bears | Lose | 16-45 | 6-7 |
| Los Angeles Rams | Lose | 24-40 | 6-8 |
| at Philadelphia Eagles | Lose | 20-27 | 6-9 |
| Washington Redskins | Win | 24-0 | 7-9 |
There is... a lot to take away from this.
Division games are obviously a difficult thing, but it’s very difficult to see the Cowboys losing on the road in Washington next Sunday. What’s more is it’s extremely difficult to envision how the Cowboys only scoring three points against the New York Jets.
What’s more is, not that history is necessarily indicative of anything in the future, ESPN has the Cowboys losing three games in a row... twice. That just seems improbable given the talent that this team has. There are definite games that appear threatening, but this entire list is very questionable.
Interestingly ESPN added some narrative context at every week of the season and they have the Lions firing their head coach, Matt Patricia, after the apparent big loss to the Cowboys. You never root for anyone to get fired, but it’s not like the Lions are a good looking team at this point.
What do you make of the 7-9 prediction?