# Broncos Punditry Check: 31 of 45 Calls Took Denver at Arrowhead, and the Field Is Still Selling 12 Wins | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-09-17 — MissedTakes*

Denver's trip to Kansas City settled 45 graded calls. Thirty-one of them had the Broncos winning.

The Chiefs won 31-10. Every straight-up Denver pick from that game scored zero, and every one of them came in at −200 on our skill measure — meaning the pick was worse than simply defaulting to the home team, which is the baseline those numbers are graded against. [Danny Parkins](/pundits/danny-parkins) went "five chips on the Denver Broncos. Another upset." [Shannon Sharpe](/pundits/shannon-sharpe) said Kansas City "ain't going to beat that defense the Broncos got." [Albert Breer](/pundits/albert-breer), [Conor Orr](/pundits/conor-orr), [Gilberto Manzano](/pundits/gilberto-manzano), [Mitch Goldich](/pundits/mitch-goldich), [Eric Mangini](/pundits/eric-mangini) and [Leonard Fournette](/pundits/leonard-fournette) all landed on Denver too.

The two best marks on the game belonged to [Pete Prisco](/pundits/pete-prisco) and [Mike Florio](/pundits/mike-florio), who each called it [Chiefs 20, Broncos 17](/opinions/4b20f46e-ebc0-462f-9e7a-2ab82f91a2ea) — 57.1 accuracy and a modest edge on the baseline. Nobody was close to a three-score Kansas City win. The best Denver-side score prediction, [Matt Hamilton](/pundits/matt-hamilton)'s 27-17, graded 23.8.

![Broncos at Chiefs, Week 1: how the field did](/posts/visuals/64cd7967-23e9-4481-a592-5feff021c15d.png)

## Why everyone was on Denver

Last season the field badly underrated this team. Six tracked win-total calls on the 2025 Broncos averaged nine wins; Denver won 14. That was the field's biggest collective underestimate of any team in 2025 outside of Kansas City's collapse — and it is directly relevant to what is being said now, because the correction has been aggressive. Of the [Broncos](/nfl/teams/broncos) win-total calls we've tracked for 2026, nearly all sit at 11 or higher.

![What the field says Denver wins in 2026](/posts/visuals/fa8d9f63-b9d7-46f0-888a-1168ba675649.png)

[Cody Rourke](/pundits/cody-rourke) and [Sayre Bedinger](/pundits/sayre-bedinger) both had Denver at [13-4 back in July](/opinions/129244f8-9c9e-4e2a-917c-bc2c74cfee05), including a Week 1 win at Arrowhead and a season sweep of the Chiefs. [Nick Ferguson](/pundits/nick-ferguson) put the floor at 10. [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) had them [12-5 as the AFC's No. 1 seed](/opinions/71f0c6e7-72a6-474d-8838-2889291a9b1e) on Sept. 7. The low voice in the room was Warren Sharp's schedule model at 9.7 wins.

Breech's own numbers show how fast the picture moved: 12-5 and the top seed on Sept. 7, [10-7 and the No. 3 seed](/opinions/f2f7d1ca-1f9b-4646-abf6-21ea106a4623) in a Sept. 9 simulation, and by Sept. 16 Denver is [the seventh seed](/opinions/2839d22f-be27-4091-a4c5-4e09ecb3747a) in a post-Week 1 re-run. [Chris Brockman](/pundits/chris-brockman) now [has them 2-4 over the next six games](/opinions/97300ef0-77e6-4bce-9655-bc43c7e5e475), with the wins coming against the Chargers and the Rams. None of these has an answer yet; the season is one game old.

## Who has actually been right about this team

We've graded 219 Denver calls out of 774 tracked. The pundits with at least five of them:

![Accuracy on Denver calls](/posts/visuals/d23edf78-c720-429c-9e4e-b0885e991e60.png)

Manti Te'o is a perfect 7-for-7 and Rich Eisen sits at 88.9 on nine — real but thin, so read them as leans rather than records. Brockman's 81.8 on ten comes with the best skill margin in the group (+84.6), which matters more than the raw accuracy: it means his Denver calls beat the naive baseline by a wide margin, not just that he picked chalk. At the other end, [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) grades out at 27.9 on seven Denver calls — though he was one of the few who took Kansas City in Week 1 and has Denver second in the division at 11-6.

The type breakdown is blunter than any individual record. Denver as a division winner: 15 graded calls, all correct. Denver as a playoff team: 93.3. Denver game picks: 71 graded at 62 accuracy but a negative skill margin, meaning the field's Broncos game calls have collectively been worse than a coin flip on the home team. Denver win totals: eight graded at 22.5.

## Where the current disagreement is

The live argument is in the skill positions, and it's genuine. [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke)'s PFF recap of the Kansas City game has J.K. Dobbins ahead of RJ Harvey as the early-down back and Courtland Sutton still the top receiver by playing time. [Andrew Erickson](/pundits/andrew-erickson)'s Week 2 waiver column says sell both — Dobbins is "touchdown-or-bust" without receiving work, Sutton managed two catches for 11 yards on five targets — and prefers Harvey's PPR floor. They agree on one thing: get Pat Bryant.

On credibility there, Jahnke's roster-spot work is strong (85.2 accuracy across 50 graded calls), but his broad preseason depth-chart roundups have graded badly, including two that scored zero this past week. Erickson is tenth on our overall board at 57.0 accuracy over 143 graded calls. Pundit-wide, Denver running back calls have graded at 78.2 accuracy and receiver calls at 46.2 — the backfield reads have been the more reliable ones.

## The league day in brief

- 577 calls were graded in the last week, three-quarters of them game outcomes and score predictions, with 373 new ones filed.
- [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice) took three of the five best grades of the week, all on depth-chart calls, including [Kyler Murray as Minnesota's Week 1 starter](/opinions/0653fc24-437c-4aba-89ee-f1f417e1983d). He leads the overall board at 47.24 with 58.0 accuracy over 168 graded calls.
- The bottom of the week was concentrated in preseason projection pieces: two PFF fantasy recaps and [John Shipley](/pundits/john-shipley)'s [full 16-man Jaguars practice-squad projection](/opinions/c0a52b7c-63b2-4e18-b7da-9342dbbc111f) all scored zero.
- [Bucky Brooks](/pundits/bucky-brooks) (41.38, 77.9 accuracy) and [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) (35.62) hold second and third.

Full standings are on the [leaderboard](/leaderboard).