# Cardinals Punditry Check: The Room Keeps Picking Arizona to Win Games It Loses | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-10-10 — MissedTakes*

Every tracked score prediction for the Cardinals' Week 4 trip to the Giants picked Arizona to win. Twelve of those calls are below, ranging from a tight one-score lean to a 23-point blowout pick. The Giants won by 12.

![Arizona at New York Giants: the room's Week 4 score calls](/posts/visuals/7714b498-51da-4c15-a2f6-b51d1a9739f9.png)

That game is not an outlier for how this club gets covered. Two weeks earlier, [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) backed Arizona as his upset special over Seattle, in three separate pieces, and the Cardinals lost 31-7. He also picked them to beat the Giants. Across the five Cardinals calls we've graded for him this season, Breech is averaging 5.7% accuracy with a -16.56 skill score, meaning his calls on this team have scored worse than simply assuming the outcome a naive guess would produce.

The category numbers back up what that game showed. Score Predictions about Arizona are averaging 25.6% accuracy across 19 graded calls, with a -64.33 average skill score; Game Outcome Picks are worse still, 16.7% accuracy on 6 graded calls and a -65.5 average skill score. Both figures sit well below where guessing honestly would land. Whatever is driving the room's confidence in Arizona on a given Sunday, it hasn't been paying off.

### Where the record holds up

The same punditry looks a lot more credible once you move off game picks. Roster Spot Calls about the Cardinals are 100% accurate across 19 graded calls, with [Donnie Druin](/pundits/donnie-druin) going 11-for-11 and [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) 8-for-8 on names like Reggie Virgil and Jedrick Wills making the 53-man roster. Mock Draft Picks tied to Arizona are sitting at 73.1% accuracy across 71 graded calls, a solid number for a notoriously hard category. Depth Chart Calls (9 graded) are running at 84.3%, though the Cardinals' current quarterback call, Jacoby Brissett staying the Week 5 starter over Detroit per both Druin and Alex Clancy, hasn't been settled yet.

![Cardinals punditry accuracy by call type](/posts/visuals/e9c4ccfa-f36d-4416-9a4c-f3d9ebb6b264.png)

Position breakdowns inside that mock-draft and roster data point the same direction: calls about Arizona's tight ends (98.6% accuracy, 6 graded) and receivers (86.1%, 14 graded) have been reliable, while cornerback calls (29.1%, 5 graded) have not. And three different analysts, [Eric Edholm](/pundits/eric-edholm), [Nate Tice](/pundits/nate-tice) and [Rob Rang](/pundits/rob-rang), have each put Arizona at pick No. 9 in very early 2027 mock drafts, all three taking a quarterback there. They don't agree on which one, Drew Mestemaker, Austin Simmons and Dante Moore are all in play, but the shared math on where Arizona picks next spring says plenty about how little faith the room has in this season turning around.

## Elsewhere: Wright and Rosenthal swing both ways, and an MVP field that got it right

The wider slate graded 910 calls over the past week, with Score Predictions (269) and Mock Draft Picks (251) making up more than half the volume. A few pundits had wild weeks in both directions. Nick Wright posted perfect win-total and division sheets on his gambling show, backing the Jaguars, Chiefs and Buccaneers among others, but also turned in a zero-accuracy call that had Dylan Gabriel holding off Shedeur Sanders in Cleveland and an under-heavy AFC/NFC slate that missed entirely. Gregg Rosenthal split the same way: a perfect Week 1 card of picks, and a separate round of under calls, including Arizona's own 2025 total, that scored zero. Danny Parkins' 32-team over/under sheet filling in for Colin Cowherd also came back at zero.

The season's award ballots held closer to form. Matthew Stafford drew the heaviest share of MVP picks (24 of 68 tracked) and won. Offensive Rookie of the Year was messier: Tetairoa McMillan won it despite getting only 5 of 29 picks, tied with Ashton Jeanty for the lead among forecasters, most of whom backed someone else entirely.

On team strength, the field's season win-total calls overshot Kansas City by an average of 6.4 wins and Washington by 5.2, while undershooting Denver, New England and Seattle by roughly 5 wins apiece. Atop the overall leaderboard, Damonza Byrd leads with a 65.8 MissedTakes Score, though that's built on just 14 graded calls; Lance Zierlein and Pat Fitzmaurice follow with considerably larger bodies of work behind similar scores. The full [leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard) has the rest.