# Panthers: The Falcons Blowout Was Everyone's Call | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-10-14 — MissedTakes*

Carolina is 2-2 heading into Week 6, and the single clearest data point on the club this season is also its most lopsided: almost every tracked pundit called the Week 2 trip to Atlanta correctly, and still underestimated how badly the Panthers would win it.

### The one everybody got right

Of the 14 pundits tracked on that game, 13 picked Carolina to beat the Falcons on the road. Only [Pete Prisco](/pundits/pete-prisco) took Atlanta. The Panthers won 34-3.

![All but one tracked pundit backed Carolina at Atlanta](/posts/visuals/be49162c-c632-4a01-8451-389c23c032e3.png)

Getting the winner right wasn't the hard part, it turned out. Even the seven pundits who also named a score missed the final margin by a wide gap. The closest score call, from Tony Fusco (Panthers 30-7), still landed 8 points off the actual result, and the average accuracy across all 16 graded calls on that single game came out to 71 out of 100. Picking the Panthers was easy that week; sizing up the blowout was not.

That split still defines how pundits talk about Carolina. [Mike Florio](/pundits/mike-florio)'s Week 6 power rankings have the Panthers 19th at 2-2, writing they "could win the division by default, again." On the other side, Russell Baxter has argued the 2-2 start is "a very encouraging" sign the Panthers could finish with a winning record for the first time since 2017. Both calls are still waiting on the season to settle them.

### Where the record gets shakier

The heaviest volume of Panthers predictions on the site isn't about games at all, it's about who makes the 53-man roster, and there it gets more interesting. Across 84 tracked roster calls (73 graded), the group's overall accuracy is a solid 84.9, but a specific kind of call keeps failing: pundits confidently naming a depth player who would get cut, and getting it wrong every time. Nathan Jahnke predicted twice that tight end Ja'Tavion Sanders wouldn't make the roster, and separately that Jimmy Horn Jr. wouldn't either; both made it, and both calls graded to the maximum penalty. Carter Bahns made the same miss twice on tight end Darren Waller. Zach Roberts whiffed the same way on safety Lathan Ransom and linebacker Princely Umanmielen. Five different "he gets cut" calls, five misses, each one scored at the floor because the simplest assumption, that a player who made last year's roster makes this one too, would have done better.

![Zach Roberts leads Panthers coverage on volume and accuracy alike](/posts/visuals/e4dd67f0-7ae3-4324-b9cb-40d99062b817.png)

That matters here because Zach Roberts is, by volume, the closest thing the site has to a dedicated Panthers voice: 82 tracked calls on the club, 57 of them graded, at 93 percent accuracy overall, the best record of anyone with a real sample on Carolina. His roster-cut misses stand out precisely because the rest of his body of work holds up. Nathan Jahnke's smaller sample (8 graded Panthers calls) cuts the other way: 62.5 percent accuracy sounds respectable until you see the average score sits at -75, meaningfully worse than simply assuming nothing changes, pulled down almost entirely by those repeated cut calls.

By position, the receiver room draws the most attention and rewards it: 57 graded calls on Panthers wideouts land at 86.2 percent accuracy, no surprise with Tetairoa McMillan's breakout, the same McMillan who was picked by 5 of 29 tracked 2025 Offensive Rookie of the Year ballots, tied for the most of anyone, and went on to win it. The running back room has had a rougher time of it from pundits: just 12 graded calls, at 46.6 percent accuracy, reflecting how unsettled the Jonathon Brooks, Chuba Hubbard and Austin Ekeler mix has been to project.

## Elsewhere: a busy week of grading and a familiar top of the leaderboard

The site graded 946 takes across the league in the past week, with mock draft picks (251) and score predictions (246) the two heaviest categories, followed by 200 game outcome calls. The best-graded calls of the week leaned hard on the Rams, who were apparently the easiest team in football to get right lately: three separate pundits (O'Shea Jackson Jr., Rob Bushka and Michael Brockers) each forecast a Los Angeles finish in the 13-4 to 14-3 range with a division title, and all three scored at the maximum. On the other end, full-roster and season-long projections mostly backfired, with Randy Gurzi's and Joe Marino's preseason Buffalo roster projections, Bill Huber's Packers forecast and Adam Chudwin's Bears season call all grading to zero.

The win-total consensus from last season shows how hard team strength still is to call months out: pundits as a group undersold Kansas City by 6.4 wins and Washington by 5.2, while overselling Denver, New England and Seattle by roughly five wins apiece.

At the top of the overall [leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard), Damonza Byrd (65.8 score on a 58 percent accuracy over 14 graded calls) and Donnie Druin (61.43 score on 96.1 percent accuracy over 15) still lead on thin samples, while Lance Zierlein's 44 graded calls make him the most heavily tested name near the top.