Reese Donatelli has been a football prognosticator since before she could talk, selecting the NFL teams she thinks will win on her dad\u2019s social media, often with unexpected accuracy. <\/p>\n
For years, football fans have loved her sass and the excitement she exudes as she shouts out her picks, grabbing the anointed team\u2019s helmet and sometimes tossing the opponent\u2019s. <\/p>\n
But when the 4-year-old\u2019s predictions weren\u2019t panning out during the first weekend of playoff games this month, the situation took a nasty turn. Followers began to think the teams she picked as winners were actually cursed to be losers. <\/p>\n
Reese\u2019s family started receiving death threats. Her dad, Anthony Donatelli, received messages from people saying they were owed thousands of dollars because her predictions were wrong. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nuts,\u201d Donatelli, of Riverside, said. \u201cShe\u2019s obviously not an NFL analyst. She\u2019s picking teams based on the color of her dress, or she\u2019ll pick the Packers because she likes cheese. She just relates these silly little things as reasons why she picks certain teams.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even rapper Cardi B joked about Reese\u2019s picks becoming curses after the girl picked the New England Patriots to win over the Houston Texans this weekend. The rapper\u2019s partner, Stefon Diggs, is a wide receiver on the team. During an Instagram live, Cardi B said that \u201clittle white girl said we\u2019re going to win. F\u2014 that, b\u2014!\u201d before immediately apologizing and saying, \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to say that.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the end, Reese\u2019s prediction that the Patriots would win was right. New England beat Houston 28-16 on Sunday, advancing to the AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos. <\/p>\n
Donatelli said that although Cardi B\u2019s comment was \u201cunfortunate,\u201d he isn\u2019t looking to feud with the Grammy winner. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not here to fight fire with fire. I\u2019m not angry,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want anybody or anything to ruin what Reese and I have created and how we bond.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Donatellis\u2019 Instagram series, now called \u201cTrust the Toddler,\u201d started nearly four years ago on a whim when Donatelli was looking to share the joy of football with his infant daughter. <\/p>\n
Donatelli purchased NFL mini helmets on Amazon as a way to help Reese learn colors and geography and introduce her to the game he grew up watching with his father. When Donatelli, a lifelong Steelers fan, first placed helmets in front of her, she picked one up and chucked it across the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, you know what, we might have something here,\u201d he recalled, laughing. \u201cIt just clicked. I would put the match-ups of who was going to play that week in front of her, and for the past four years she\u2019s been calling football games. And she\u2019s been pretty dang good at it.\u201d <\/p>\n
But even the best guessers have their off days.<\/p>\n
There were six games in the first week of the playoffs, and Reese guessed the wrong team would win each time. The next week, she was 1 for 9 after predicting that the Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers and Chicago Bears would win their respective games. <\/p>\n
Amid the hoopla, Donatelli kept it lighthearted, posting on Instagram that \u201cthe curse has been reversed\u201d alongside a photo of Reese, her fist pumped into the air in victory after she (rightly) predicted that the Patriots would beat the Texans. <\/p>\n
Some still weren\u2019t happy, but others kept up with the joke. One Instagram user deadpanned that they\u2019d put \u201c$10 million on Houston because of her,\u201d adding that they\u2019re in \u201cmore debt than the U.S. government now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another follower offered a reality check for the haters: \u201cIf [you\u2019re] letting a kid pick your parlays you shouldn\u2019t be betting.\u201d <\/p>\n
Donatelli and Reese aren\u2019t planning to stop their tradition anytime soon. For them, time spent watching Sunday football only strengthens their daddy-daughter bond, even if Reese\u2019s team picks don\u2019t always make it to the end zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reese Donatelli has been a football prognosticator since before she could talk, selecting the NFL teams she thinks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[100989,100986,32996,100988,69167,7,12310,853,253,4261,249,6,46124,100987,100985,185,1320],"class_list":{"0":"post-692444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-4-year-old","9":"tag-anthony-donatelli","10":"tag-color","11":"tag-death-threat","12":"tag-first-weekend","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-football-fan","15":"tag-game","16":"tag-houston-texans","17":"tag-instagram","18":"tag-new-england-patriots","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-nfl-prediction","21":"tag-rapper-cardi-b","22":"tag-reese-donatelli","23":"tag-team","24":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115930312514274529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}