# Chiefs Punditry Check: Everyone Picked the Colts Win, and Only the Margin Callers Separated Themselves | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-09-23 — MissedTakes*

Kansas City's overtime win over Indianapolis in Week 2 produced one of the cleaner little natural experiments in Chiefs punditry this year. Practically everyone picked Kansas City to win — [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) ("I would be very, very surprised if the Chiefs lose"), [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd), [Greg Jennings](/pundits/greg-jennings), [Mike Florio](/pundits/mike-florio) and [Joshua Schulman](/pundits/joshua-schulman) all had it, and all of them scored a flat zero on our skill measure for it — picking the favorite in a game the model already expected Kansas City to win 75% of the time earns accuracy, not credit.

The split showed up among the pundits who went further and called an exact score. The final was tight — Kansas City won by three, in overtime. [Jared Dubin](/pundits/jared-dubin) predicted a 4-point Kansas City margin and was rewarded for it (+11.62 skill on a 97.6 accuracy grade). [Pete Prisco](/pundits/pete-prisco) and [Jordan Dajani](/pundits/jordan-dajani) both called Kansas City to win comfortably — margins of 10 and 7 — and both lost skill points (-16.09 and -2.24) for overselling a game that came down to overtime. Getting the winner right is the easy part with this team; the number is where pundits actually reveal themselves.

### Where the field's confidence collapses

Zoom out to every graded Chiefs call we've tracked and the shape gets rougher. Roster Spot Calls are the field's best category on this club by a wide margin — 89.5% accuracy on 19 graded calls, people mostly got Travis Kelce and the offensive line right. Score Predictions (60.9%) and Game Outcome Picks (62.0%) hold up fine too. But once punditry reaches for something bigger, it falls apart: Season Win Totals sit at just 10% accuracy across 14 graded calls, Division Winner and Playoff Berth calls are both stuck in the mid-teens, and Award Picks land at 21.4%. That's not a coincidence — the field collectively missed Kansas City's 2025 win total by 6.3 wins, the largest team-season miss we've tracked, after a wave of "Chiefs always play under their total" calls from pundits including Gregg Rosenthal and Nick Wright expecting another 12-win season. Kansas City finished with six.

![Chiefs punditry accuracy by call type](/posts/visuals/ad365548-35ef-47db-b3aa-9fbe66454eba.png)

By position, the receiver room draws the most chatter about this team (127 takes) and the worst accuracy of any position graded so far (45.8%) — Rashee Rice alone generated conflicting bust and sleeper calls that graded in opposite directions. Compare that to the offensive tackle spot: only 50 takes, but 83.5% accuracy, the most reliably-called position room on the roster.

### Who's actually earned trust here

Among voices with at least five graded Chiefs calls, Chris Clark leads on our skill measure (+77.78, 54.9% accuracy on 13 graded calls), with Locked On Chiefs (+47.04) and KC Laboratory (+44.29) close behind. Daniel Jeremiah pairs volume with quality — 77.3% accuracy on 10 graded calls, the best accuracy of anyone in this group. On the other end, [Brady Quinn](/pundits/brady-quinn) has the worst mark by far (9.1% accuracy, -35.44 skill on 11 graded calls), and the two highest-volume Chiefs voices, Nick Wright and Colin Cowherd, both sit in slightly negative skill territory (-5.8 and -3.37) — mostly a function of picking Kansas City to win easy games, then getting burned on the bolder division, playoff and Super Bowl calls layered on top.

![Skill delta, Chiefs-focused pundits (5+ graded calls)](/posts/visuals/ac7ad7ae-3ec9-41c7-a3bd-8e49bc92e540.png)

Two current-season claims are still open. [Tyler Sullivan](/pundits/tyler-sullivan) — who ranks second on our overall leaderboard — called Patrick Mahomes "a virtual lock" for Comeback Player of the Year after the Colts win. And Nick Wright is on record that Tyreek Hill will be back in a Chiefs uniform "around Halloween." Neither has anything to be measured against yet; the season hasn't answered them.

### The league's day in brief

We graded 591 takes across the site this week and logged 385 new ones, split heavily between Trade and Signing Calls (159) and Game Outcome Picks (162). The best of the week were all roster-move calls that landed clean — Greg Auman on Will Levis getting claimed on waivers, John Maakaron on a wave of Lions cuts, Bradley Locker's roster-bubble list, Dharya Sharma on Levis leaving Tennessee, and Jonathan Jones's Anthony Richardson trade call all graded 100% accuracy. The worst were a mix of a FantasyPros waiver column, a Pat Fitzmaurice depth-chart column, Aniello Piro's Broncos-to-the-Super-Bowl pick, David Harrison's Commanders win-total math and a Packers rookie report from Bill Huber — all zeroed out.

On consensus: Kansas City's -6.3 win-total miss topped the tracked list this cycle, with New England and Seattle both underestimated by 5 wins and Washington and Las Vegas both overestimated by roughly 4.5-4.8. And in the award ballots, Matthew Stafford's MVP win came in ahead of a Drake Maye-led field, while Tetairoa McMillan edged Ashton Jeanty for Offensive Rookie of the Year in a tie atop the picks.

For the full pundit rankings, check the [leaderboard](/leaderboard).