# Bears 23, Jets 12: 19 of 24 Picked Chicago, Only Two Guessed How Big

*Published 2026-10-05 — MissedTakes*

Chicago beat New York 23-12 in Week 4, and the room mostly saw it coming — just not how lopsided it would get. Across the 26 graded calls this game settled, 24 individual pundits weighed in on the winner or the score, and the split wasn't close: 19 took the Bears, five took the Jets. Chicago winning wasn't a surprise. The surprise is how few people had the right idea about the margin, and how badly the five who bucked the room fared.

![Most pundits took the home Bears](/posts/visuals/5e62c40e-fe7b-4323-999c-c28087f079eb.png)

### Picking the favorite doesn't earn much

Here's the catch with that 19-5 split: Chicago was the home team and the favorite, so an outright "Bears win" pick was the naive play — the same call you'd make with no information at all. That's exactly why most of the outright-winner picks in this game (from [Pete Martuneac](/pundits/pete-martuneac), [Danny Parkins](/pundits/danny-parkins), [Eric Cohen](/pundits/eric-cohen), [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman), [Steve Palazzolo](/pundits/steve-palazzolo), [Sam Monson](/pundits/sam-monson) and others) graded a flat zero on MissedTakes Score — accurate, but no better than the default. The real test was the margin, and that's where this game separated the room.

Fourteen pundits put a number on it. The field's median call was Bears by 3; Chicago won by 11, and the room's average accuracy on this game settled at 78. The sharpest call belonged to [Gene Chamberlain](/pundits/gene-chamberlain), who had Chicago winning 30-20 — a 10-point margin that missed the actual 11-point spread by just one point, the best score call in the room (97.62 accuracy, +39.21 skill). Right behind him, [Pete Martuneac](/pundits/pete-martuneac) called it 30-17 (missed by 2, +34.86 skill), backing a preview that read: "This is a game the Bears should win, and win big thanks to a handful of key performances, including an efficient day from Tyson Bagent." He was right about the blowout shape even if the final score landed differently.

![Predicted margins vs. the final score](/posts/visuals/71b52553-3076-4c01-bfd5-9470b2259140.png)

### The five who took the Jets

Nobody who backed New York came out ahead, and the ones who put a score on it paid for it. [Bobby Kownack](/pundits/bobby-kownack) called Jets 28-27 (missed the margin by 12, accuracy 26.19, -91.5 skill), [Jeremy Pargo](/pundits/jeremy-pargo) had Jets 20-18 (missed by 13, -87.14 skill), and [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) went with Jets 23-16 (missed by 18, accuracy 40.48, -65.36 skill). The two who took New York outright without a number fared even worse by the site's math: [Chris Long](/pundits/chris-long) said "I think it's a letdown spot for the Bears… I think that I think the Jets can get this one," and [Greg Jennings](/pundits/greg-jennings) put chips on the Jets expecting them "to get it done." Both graded zero accuracy and -183 skill — worse than simply defaulting to the home team, which is precisely what that negative number measures.

### Does this fit the pattern?

Chamberlain's call is a bright spot on a thin record — he's provisional with only five graded takes overall, and his score-prediction type sits at 77.38% accuracy across two calls, this one being the stronger of the pair; his roster-spot calls have dragged his overall number into negative territory, so take the brilliance here as a small-sample highlight, not a trend.

Breech's miss fits a larger shape. Across 76 graded score predictions, he sits at 51.26% accuracy and a slightly negative skill mark (-9.25) — already an unremarkable scorer before this one, which pulls that average down further. Long's whiff is also consistent with his record rather than a one-off: across 11 graded game-outcome picks, he's at 56.67% accuracy and -55.9 skill, so Sunday's "letdown spot" theory joins a pattern of outcome calls that haven't paid off.

### What it means going forward

The win pushes Chicago to 3-1 and drops New York to 1-3. That's modest confirmation for [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd), who called the Bears' 9.5-win season total the offseason's "easiest bet" back in March, reasoning in part that a soft schedule against the NFC South and AFC East — this Jets game included — would pad the record. It's one data point in a much larger bet, but it's trending his way. On the volume side, pundits calling Bears games this season have been reasonably sharp on outcomes (70% accuracy across 90 graded game-outcome calls involving Chicago), while Jets outcome calls have been rough across the board — 30.6% accuracy and a negative average skill mark across 36 graded calls, a sign the room is still struggling to read this New York team.

For the season-long view on both clubs, and where every pundit named here stacks up, see the [team pages](/nfl/teams/bears) for [the Jets](/nfl/teams/jets) and the [overall leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard).