Giants Punditry Check: The Rams Upset Pick That Burned the Field, and a Beat Writer's Coin-Flip Roster Calls | MissedTakes Daily
Picking New York Giants games has been a bad trade this season. Across 29 graded game-outcome calls on the Giants, pundits have hit only 44.8% of the time with an average skill score of -83.28 — deeply negative, meaning the field has done worse than just assuming the more obvious side would win. One week explains most of the damage.
The Rams pile-on
In Week 2, at least four separate pundits backed the Giants to beat the Rams outright on the road — Patricia Traina, Danny Parkins, Garrett Podell and Phil Simms all picked New York, framing it as a live upset given the Rams' sluggish trip to Australia. The Giants lost 6-28. Every one of those calls graded out at -194 skill, the standard penalty here for backing a double-digit underdog that gets routed. It's a reminder that an upset pick only pays off if the underdog shows up, and this one didn't.
Compare that to the Week 3 Titans game, where John Breech, Pete Prisco and Chris Simms all called both the Giants win and something close to the actual margin — those scored positive skill (+15.89, +2.39 and +14.06) because they beat a tougher bar than "just pick the favorite." Across all score predictions on the Giants, that's the pattern: 83.3% accuracy and positive skill (+8.31) on 5 graded calls, a thin sample but a cleaner one than the straight win-loss picks.
Traina covers the team closely — her roster calls are a coin flip
Nobody writes about this team more than Traina, who has 59 graded Giants calls on the books, the bulk of them 53-man roster projections (57 of them). In that lane she's hit 58.5% of the time with a missed-takes score of -16.15 — worse than just assuming last year's depth chart holds. Her range shows why: she correctly kept Francis Mauigoa, Arvell Reese and J.C. Davis on the 53-man roster (each +200 skill), but also cut Elijah Campbell and Braxton Berrios, who both made the team anyway (each -200 skill). It's a genuinely 50/50 record at this point, not a trustworthy edge.
She wasn't alone in a confident miss elsewhere on the roster: Greg Auman argued the Giants' defensive front would exceed last year's sacks total and predicted Devin Singletary would be the odd back out behind Cam Skattebo and Tyrone Tracy — that call graded 0% accurate.
Where the position-room coverage holds up better
Broken out by position, the Giants' cornerback and wide receiver coverage has been the most reliable: CB calls are hitting 91.4% with a +39.04 skill score (16 graded), and WR calls — the deepest sample at 38 graded — sit at 76.6% accuracy with +47.2 skill. Linebacker calls, relevant given the Brian Burns injury reshuffling the edge, are hitting 83.3% with +34.22 skill across 39 graded takes. Tight end and defensive tackle coverage is the opposite story — 66.7% and 58.8% accuracy with negative skill scores — though those samples are only six graded calls each, too thin to call a trend.
The one thing nobody's arguing about
With Jaxson Dart out for the season and J.J. McCarthy acquired from Minnesota, the reporting on who starts has been unusually uniform: Jameis Winston starts, McCarthy learns behind him. Ian Rapoport, Tom Pelissero, Traina, Fox Sports and John Breech have all filed versions of the same call over the past week, and none of it has been graded yet since the season hasn't settled it. The one dissenting note is about McCarthy's ceiling, not his role: Carter Bahns argues McCarthy's Minnesota tenure was a bust and it would be a surprise if he ever lives up to his draft billing — a minority opinion worth watching once he actually sees the field.
Around the league
The site graded 1,931 takes over the past week, most of them roster-spot calls (1,574) as final 53-man cuts settled across the league. Noah Strackbein, Jared Koch, Albert Breer, Michael David Smith and Jeff Kerr all landed perfect, maximum-skill calls on depth-chart and roster questions; Nathan Jahnke (twice), Alain Poupart and Moe Moton landed on the other end, each at 0% accuracy.
On last year's win totals, the field's biggest misses ranged from Kansas City (-6.3 wins) to New England and Seattle (+5 wins each), with Denver, Washington and Las Vegas all off by more than four and a half wins. On the award side, Matthew Stafford won MVP after collecting 26 of 100 recorded picks (Drake Maye was next with 14), and Tetairoa McMillan took Offensive Rookie of the Year with 5 of 29 ballots.
See how every pundit stacks up on the leaderboard.