Survivor League: Tom Brady's loss is Mitchell Tenpenny's win as a season champ is crowned

Matthew Leimkuehler, Nashville Tennessean
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The inaugural Music City Survivor League came down to the final play. Literally.

As regulation ended Sunday afternoon, the New York Giants stopped Jacksonville a yard short of scoring a game-tying touchdown, cementing a comeback win from this year's unlikely breakout team.

The clock-expiring goal-line stand didn't just propel the Giants to another nail-biting win — it helped crown "Truth About You" singer Mitchell Tenpenny as the inaugural Music City Survivor League champion. He's the last-standing singer in a double-elimination contest where mainstream country hitmakers picked NFL games each week in hopes of scoring football nerd-ery bragging rights on Music Row.

To win the league, Tenpenny outlasted Kane Brown, Darius Rucker, Old Dominion's Matthew Ramsey, Lainey Wilson, Chris Young, Natalie Grant, Breland, Scotty McCreery and more.

Tenpenny gambled Sunday on Daniel Jones and the hotter-than-anticipated Giants to beat an up-and-down Jaguars team, while runner-up Matt Stell put his season on the line with Tom Brady's Buccaneers against the Carolina Panthers.

Tom Brady is tackled by Carolina Panthers linebacker Frankie Luvu.
Tom Brady is tackled by Carolina Panthers linebacker Frankie Luvu.

This year's champion owes a crown-sized "thank you" to Brady, but not for one of his signature come-from-behind wins. Brady choked for the second week in a row, sending Stell home despite his pick starting the game as a 13.5-point favorite (that's why teams play the game, eh?).

Overall, Tenpenny went 6-1 in picks; his only loss came in week one, when the Nashville native's beloved Tennessee Titans lost to - you guessed it - the New York Giants.

Tenpenny released his latest album, the 20-song "This Is The Heavy," earlier this year via Riser House Entertainment/Sony Music Nashville. His next single "We Got History" hits country radio next month.

Mitchell Tenpenny performs at the CRS 2020 New Faces of Country Music event at the Omni Hotel Friday, February 21, 2020.
Mitchell Tenpenny performs at the CRS 2020 New Faces of Country Music event at the Omni Hotel Friday, February 21, 2020.

About the Tennessean's Music City Survivor League

Country music fandom and NFL nerd-ery collided with the inaugural Music City Survivor League, a bragging rights tournament for the biggest football geek on Music Row. Artists picked one team a week each week of the NFL season. If that team wins or ties? They moved on. If that team lost? The singer may be eliminated.

We played double-elimination. No artist picked the same team twice in a season. The last musician standing won the league.

Follow along with music news via Tennessean.com or in our weekly music newsletter, The Pick.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Survivor League: Tom Brady's loss is Mitchell Tenpenny's win in final