Reese Donatelli has been a football prognosticator since before he could talk, picking the NFL teams he thinks will win on his father’s social media, often with unexpected accuracy.
For years, football fans have loved his sass and the excitement he exudes as he shouts picks, grabs the hat of the anointed team and sometimes throws enemies.
But when the 4-year-old’s predictions fell through on the first weekend of the finals this month, the situation took a turn for the worse. Fans began to think that the teams they picked as winners were actually cursed as losers.
Reese’s family began receiving death threats. His father, Anthony Donatelli, received messages from people saying he owed thousands of dollars because his predictions were wrong.
“It’s nuts,” said Donatelli, of Riverside. “Obviously he’s not an NFL analyst. He picks teams based on the color of his shirt, or he’ll pick the Packers because he likes cheese. He just says these silly little things as reasons why he picks certain teams.”
Even rapper Cardi B joked that Reese’s picks were cursed after the girl picked the New England Patriots to win over the Houston Texans this weekend. Fellow rapper, Stefon Diggs, is widely accepted into the group. During an Instagram live broadcast, Cardi B said “white girl said we’re gonna win. F— that, b—!” before quickly apologizing and saying, “I didn’t mean to say that.”
In the end, Reese’s prediction that the Patriots would win was correct. New England beat Houston 28-16 on Sunday, advancing to the AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos.
Donatelli said that although Cardi B’s comments were “unfortunate,” she did not want to argue with the Grammy winner.
“I’m not here to put out the fire, I’m not angry,” he said. “We don’t want anyone or anything to ruin what Reese and I have created and how close we are.”
Donatelli’s Instagram series, now called “Trust the Toddler,” began nearly four years ago when Donatelli wanted to share the joy of soccer with his infant daughter.
Donatelli bought the miniature NFL helmets on Amazon as a way to help Reese learn colors and geography and introduce him to the game he grew up watching with his father. When Donatelli, a lifelong Steelers fan, first placed the helmets in front of him, he picked one up and smashed it across the room.
“I said, you know, we could have something here,” he recalled, laughing. “It just clicked. I would put the match-ups of who was going to play that week in front of him, and for the last four years he’s been calling them football games. And he’s been good at them.”
But even the best speculators have their off days.
There were six games in the first week of the playoffs, and Reese predicted that the wrong team would win each time. The following week, he was 1 in 9 after predicting that the Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers and Chicago Bears would win their games.
Amidst the hoopla, Donatelli kept his cool, writing on Instagram that “the curse has been changed” alongside a photo of Reese, his fist pumped in triumph after he (correctly) predicted the Patriots would beat the Texans.
Some were still not happy, but others continued the joke. One Instagram user decided they would put “$10 million in Houston for him,” adding that “they’re more in debt than the US government right now.”
One fan gave the haters a reality check: “If [you’re] let the kid pick your parlays you shouldn’t bet.”
Donatelli and Reese don’t plan on stopping their tradition anytime soon. For them, time spent watching Sunday football strengthens their father-daughter bond, even if Reese’s chosen team doesn’t make it to the finals.
