# Packers 31, Bears 7: Seven in Ten Pundits Had Chicago Winning

*Published 2026-10-11 — MissedTakes*

Green Bay beat Chicago 31-7 at Lambeau Field in Week 5, and the field of pundits we tracked mostly didn't call it that way. We graded 49 calls tied to this game: 28 picks on who would win, 21 predicted scores, and across every one of them the average grade was 27 out of 100. The Bears were not just a popular pick. They were the overwhelming one.

## Seven in Ten Picked the Team That Lost by 24

Counting one vote per pundit, the way the game page does, 35 people on record took a side: 25 for the Bears, 10 for the Packers. Among the 21 who named a score, the median call had Chicago winning by 6. Instead Green Bay led from the start and won by 24.

![Seven in ten pundits picked the team that lost by 24](/posts/visuals/d93105d2-0508-4ca4-a4fa-391687fe7b2e.png)

The 10 who took Green Bay graded a perfect 100 on the winner call, but it's worth being precise about what that means. Green Bay was the home team, and picking the home team is this site's naive default: the free pick anyone could have made without an opinion. So every one of those 10 correct calls scored a skill delta of exactly zero, right, but no better than a coin that always lands on the home side. Nobody who called the Bears cashed in a contrarian read, because the Bears didn't win. The flip side is where the skill numbers turned ugly: the 25 who took Chicago graded zero on the winner call and a skill delta of -178, the full penalty for missing an outcome pick.

## The Five Who Had Green Bay

Among the correct calls, a few were specific enough to stand out. [Carson Caldwell](/pundits/carson-caldwell) wrote that "the Packers will hang 30+ in an upset win against the Bears"; Green Bay scored 31. [Garrett Podell](/pundits/garrett-podell) picked the Packers on the strength of Jordan Love, predicting he'd put together a performance that would "lead the Packers to victory over their hated rivals." [Albert Breer](/pundits/albert-breer) hedged his way to the right answer, "Green Bay should win, should, should, should," and [Chris Broussard](/pundits/chris-broussard) said flatly, "I actually do think Green Bay will win this game." All four graded 100 and, per the math above, zero skill credit, since the home team is exactly what they picked.

On score predictions, nobody came especially close; this was a blowout, and nobody called a blowout. The nearest two calls, from [Gennaro Filice](/pundits/gennaro-filice) (Packers 25-22) and Pete Prisco (Packers 27-24), both predicted a 3-point Green Bay margin and still missed the actual 24-point margin by 21 points. Every other score call missed by more.

![The closest score call still missed by 21 points](/posts/visuals/f3b5cb69-c221-4793-a10c-0bafe178920f.png)

## Where It Went Wrong, By Name

The worst of the score calls belonged to [Donald Gooch](/pundits/donald-gooch), who predicted "it is the Bears in a rout," naming a 42-10 final with the margin running 32 points in the wrong direction. It missed by 56 points and graded 30.95 accuracy. It's the only graded call we have on record for him, so there's no larger pattern to measure it against, just one confident call that inverted the final score.

Several outcome picks leaned on specific reasoning that didn't hold up. [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman) argued Green Bay's patched-up offensive line still wasn't "enough," [Jerry Markarian](/pundits/jerry-markarian) liked Chicago's pass rush to carry a backup quarterback to a road win, and [Tyler Sullivan](/pundits/tyler-sullivan) picked the Bears to win and cover behind a "league-leading rushing attack." All three graded zero. Sullivan's case is the odd one: in a separate piece flagging vulnerable favorites, he also named the Packers as a live upset pick, which graded 100, while his main picks column had Chicago both to win and to post a 28-20 score, which graded 0 and 11.9 respectively. Same week, same pundit, two different games on paper.

## One Writer, Two Different Games

Nobody split harder than [Bill Huber](/pundits/bill-huber). In mid-September he forecast a Packers loss to the Bears as part of a revised season outlook (0 accuracy). On October 10th, one of his pieces led with "three reasons why the Packers will beat the Bears," a perfect call. The very next day, another Huber piece argued "three reasons why the Bears will win again and officially stamp themselves as the team to beat," alongside a score prediction of Bears 31, Packers 21 (16.67 accuracy). Across his full body of work this season, Huber's overall accuracy sits at 73.78% over 68 graded calls, but that number is carried by 53 near-perfect roster-spot calls; his game-outcome picks specifically have graded 56.67% over 12 chances, and this week's pair of results dragged that side of his ledger further down.

[Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice) sits at No. 5 on our overall leaderboard, built mostly on strong depth-chart and mock-draft work. His game-outcome category is thin, just 3 graded calls, and his pick that "Packers are probably going to get a lead and blow it again" against Chicago added another zero to that small sample, now sitting at 33.33% accuracy on outcome picks specifically.

## What Sunday Changes Going Forward

Across the season so far, pundits have actually read Green Bay's games better than Chicago's: Packers game-outcome picks are grading 71.4% accurate on average, against 49.1% for Bears game-outcome picks. This week didn't change that gap, it extended it. Anyone still holding a big-number season for Chicago now has a 7-point output at Lambeau to explain, and anyone skeptical of Green Bay has a 24-point road win to explain away. Full team-by-team calls are on the [Packers](/nfl/teams/packers) and [Bears](/nfl/teams/bears) pages, and the overall standings are on the [leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard).