# Panthers 32, Lions 26: 38 Pundits Took Detroit. Three Took Carolina. Carolina Won.

*Published 2026-10-05 — MissedTakes*

Carolina beat Detroit 32-26 on Sunday night, and the room of pundits we track was not ready for it. We settled 42 graded calls on this game — winner picks, score predictions, and one combined-points prop — and by the room's own vote, it wasn't close: 38 pundits took the Lions, three took the Panthers.

The Panthers won.

## The field got run over

Counting one vote per pundit, the way the [Lions at Panthers](/nfl/games/2026-week-4-lions-at-panthers) game page does, the split was 38-3 for Detroit. The room's average accuracy on this game came out to 36 out of 100 — a bad week by any standard, and the shape of the miss matters as much as its size. The median score call in the room had Detroit winning by 7. The Panthers won by 6.

![Detroit drew 38 of 41 picks, and lost](/posts/visuals/8d52b7bb-6106-4990-a19e-01863f15756e.png)

What makes the miss sting more: Carolina was the nominal home-field pick to begin with. A plain home-team default would have gotten this one right. Instead, the great majority of the room talked itself into Detroit on the road anyway — and paid for it.

## The calls worth naming

Two voices stood apart. [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman) flagged it explicitly as an upset pick days before kickoff: "Mitchell, this is my upset alert... It just smells like Detroit is going to go in there and score 31 points but give up 36." He landed Panthers 36-31 — a predicted home margin of 5, missed by just 1 once the final was in, the closest call in the entire room.

Right behind him, [Carter Bahns](/pundits/carter-bahns) called a different flavor of the same shootout: Panthers 38-34, arguing both defenses were too leaky to slow the other side down. His predicted margin of 4 missed by 2 — second-closest in the room.

A third voice, [Tyler Sullivan](/pundits/tyler-sullivan) of CBS Sports, flagged Carolina as a live upset winner in a separate winner-only pick, pointing to Detroit's "bottom-of-the-league defense" as the opening. He was right, though his score for it reads as a wash rather than a win: the call matched what a simple home-team default would have said anyway, so it scored 100 accuracy but zero added skill above that baseline. Picking the favorite and being right is fine; it just isn't the same as Sherman or Bahns going out on a limb on the number.

## The misses, and how big they were

Everyone else took Detroit, and the size of the miss varied enormously. At the tighter end, seven pundits — including [Mike Kadlick](/pundits/mike-kadlick), [Jeremy Reisman](/pundits/jeremy-reisman) and [Erik Schlitt](/pundits/erik-schlitt) — had Detroit winning by 3 or 4, missing the final margin by 9 or 10 points once Carolina's six-point win was final.

At the other end, two picks were well beyond salvageable. [Ty Schalter](/pundits/ty-schalter) predicted a 34-13 Lions blowout — missed by 27 — and [Anthony Balaj](/pundits/anthony-balaj) went further still with Lions 45-20, missed by 31, the single worst score call on the board (0 skill-adjusted score, graded at -152.5). Both calls happen to be each pundit's only graded take on our site so far, so there's no larger record to weigh them against — just a first entry that opened about as badly as a first entry can.

One more oddity: [Ben McWilliams](/pundits/ben-mcwilliams) predicted this game and the Jaguars-Bengals game would combine for at least 85 points between them. Lions-Panthers alone produced 58; that call graded to zero.

## What this does to the two pundits who called it

Sherman's hit extends a pattern rather than interrupting one — our records show him at 73.08% accuracy on score predictions specifically (24 graded calls), well above his 59.92% mark across everything he's picked, including the award ballots and division calls that have not gone his way nearly as often. This was his type working as advertised.

Bahns is a thinner story. His 22 graded calls across all categories carry a below-water overall score, dragged down almost entirely by a rough stretch of roster-spot calls. But on the four score predictions we've graded for him, he's now sitting on 67.26% accuracy — a small sample, but a real one, and this game's call was its best entry yet.

## Beyond this one game

The result also complicates two season-long bets. Multiple pundits — among them [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech), [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) and [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) — entered the year picking Detroit to win the NFC North outright, and separate voices including [Jourdan Rodrigue](/pundits/jourdan-rodrigue) and [Geoff Schwartz](/pundits/geoff-schwartz) backed Carolina to win the NFC South; neither bet got any easier to defend or dismiss off one game, but a loss like this one is exactly the kind of result those season calls will eventually be measured against. For the full picture on both clubs — and on everyone named above — see the [Detroit Lions](/nfl/teams/lions) and [Carolina Panthers](/nfl/teams/panthers) team pages, or the site's [leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard).