The Rams cornerback didn’t exactly make brave predictions in November, but he made correct ones.
All the favorites won in the Divisional Round this weekend, leaving us with a pair of conference championship games between No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. It wasn’t the hardest group of games to predict, but Aqib Talib managed to nail the final four teams two months ago.
A day before the Rams’ Week 10 game against the Seattle Seahawks, NFL Network’s Taylor Bisciotti asked the cornerback to give his prediction of the conference championship matchups. He guessed Rams vs. Saints in the NFC and Patriots vs. Chiefs in the AFC.
Who will play on Championship Sunday? What about in the Super Bowl? @AqibTalib21 says… (via @TaylorBisciotti) pic.twitter.com/S0k73qc2JH
— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) November 10, 2018
At the time, the Chiefs and Rams were each 8-1, and the Patriots and Saints were 7-2. Those were the teams with the top four records in the NFL, so Talib didn’t exactly go out on a limb with his guesses.
His NFC prediction wasn’t too surprising either. Of course he’d pick his own team, the Rams. And he picked the Saints less than a week after New Orleans handed the Rams their first loss of the season.
“Let’s the rematch. The Saints,” Talib told Bisciotti.
To get to the revenge game, the Rams had to beat the Cowboys and they got the job done with a 30-22 win. After the game, Talib had a hot mic moment, interrupting a FOX interview with Jared Goff to yell “He ain’t taking no fucking soul out there.”
Talib’s conference game predictions aren’t nearly as impressive as Calais Campbell’s spot-on prediction that the Jaguars would beat the Steelers, 45-42, in the Divisional Round a year ago.
But the NFL is notoriously difficult to predict, and teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina Panthers were looking like real threats to snatch away one of the top seeds when he made his midseason guesses.
It’s also pretty rare for all the top seeds to make it to conference championship weekend. Last year, the No. 3 seeded Jaguars got to the AFC Championship. The year before that, the No. 3 Steelers and No. 4 Packers each got through the Divisional Round.
Talib stuck with the chalk predictions and came away looking like a fortune teller.