Rams 28, Giants 6: The Three Who Picked the Upset All Missed

Los Angeles beat New York 28-6 on Monday night, and the result settled 28 graded calls we'd tracked on this game — 16 straight winner picks and 12 exact-score predictions. This was not a game the field was split on.

The verdict: a lopsided field, mostly right

Twenty-five of the 28 calls backed the Rams in some form. Only three pundits picked the Giants outright to win, and all three missed. That's not a split so much as a landslide with a small, unlucky minority on the wrong side of it.

Strip out the score predictions and look at the 16 pure winner picks: 13 took the Rams, three took the Giants. The 13 who took Los Angeles all got credited with 100% accuracy — but every one of them scored zero on our skill measure, because picking the home favorite is exactly what a coin-flip default would do too. Getting the winner right here wasn't hard. Getting the *margin* right is where the separation happened.

The calls worth naming

Among the 12 score predictions, all picked Los Angeles, and the tightest to the actual 28-6 (a 22-point margin) came from Pete Prisco, who called it Rams 30, Giants 14 — twice, once in a full slate column on September 18 and again on the eve of kickoff. A predicted 16-point margin against an actual 22-point win graded out to 85.71% accuracy and a skill score of +69.29, the best of any call this game settled.

Behind him: Jared Dubin had the Rams winning 27-17 in three separate pieces dating back to September 17 (accuracy 71.43, skill +41.57 each time), while also hedging with a conditional 17-16 pick if Puka Nacua sat out, which barely beat a coin flip once graded (skill 0). Tyler Sullivan and Jordan Dajani both landed on Rams 30-21 (accuracy 69.05, skill +36.95), and John Breech picked Rams 27-24 twice — correct on the winner, but a 3-point margin call against a 22-point win limited him to a skill score of +9.24.

None of these were road-underdog calls — the Rams were the home side, so nobody here beat the "just take the favorite" script by picking against the grain. The only voices who tried that this week were the three who took the Giants, and none of them survived contact with the scoreboard.

The misses, by name

Three pundits backed New York outright, and the record doesn't need us to pile on — it does the work:

• Patricia Traina, in her Giants mailbag: "The narrative is that the Giants have to bring their A-game. What happens if the Rams don't bring theirs? — The Giants will win."
• Danny Parkins, on air: "Are you flirting with an outright win for your Giants? Absolutely... I'll pick it. Yes. I'll pick it."
• Garrett Podell, in a CBS Sports bold-predictions piece: "That record will drop to 4-1 after John Harbaugh's Giants go into SoFi Stadium and leave with a 'Monday Night Football' road win."

All three graded to 0% accuracy and a skill score of -194 — a call that badly missed the naive expectation, not just the final result.

What this did to their records

Context matters here, and it cuts differently for each of them. Pete Prisco carries a 65.1% overall accuracy and a +37.86 MissedTakes Score across 43 graded calls (a provisional sample), with his score-prediction work specifically running at +18.15 on average — this call, at +69.29, was well above his own norm, not a fluke inside a strong stretch.

Danny Parkins is a high-volume generalist with 95 graded calls overall, 58.04% accuracy, and a roughly break-even -6.19 MissedTakes Score. His game-outcome picks specifically run 59.44% accurate at -17.32 skill across 31 calls — already a soft spot in an otherwise broad résumé, and this pick fits that pattern rather than standing out from it.

Patricia Traina and Garrett Podell both have thin, rough ledgers. Traina is at 36.46% accuracy and -103.9 skill across 13 graded calls, mostly roster-spot projections; this was her only graded game-outcome pick, and it's now the worst mark on a record that didn't have much room to spare. Podell has just four graded calls total — a small enough sample that one bold-prediction miss moves his numbers a lot, but for what it's worth, his two graded game-outcome picks are now both misses.

Beyond this one game

Across everything we've tracked on the Giants this season, outright game-outcome picks for New York are hitting at just 40% accuracy with an average skill score of -88.84 over 25 graded calls — this result fits a team the field keeps overestimating in-game, even as some of the same voices still carry double-digit season win totals on them. The Rams, by contrast, sit at 70.2% accuracy and +38.28 skill on their 122 graded outcome picks, a much steadier trend line that Monday night's bounce-back only reinforces.

For the season-long view on both clubs — win totals, division and playoff calls — see the Rams and Giants team pages, and check where these pundits rank overall on the leaderboard.