# Jets 17, Browns 12: Two-Thirds of the Field Picked Cleveland and Lost With It

*Published 2026-10-11 — MissedTakes*

New York beat Cleveland 17-12 at MetLife Stadium in Week 5, and most of the pundits we tracked had the wrong team winning. Nineteen graded calls settled this game, covering 18 different pundits once you count each voice once for its latest pick, and the field leaned hard toward the wrong team.

## 12 of 18 had this one backwards

Of the 18 pundits whose calls on this game we graded, 12 took the Browns to win and only 6 sided with the Jets.

![12 of 18 pundits had this one backwards](/posts/visuals/ad073f7c-8f5a-4e66-bcb2-cbb156adae2a.png)

That's not a coin flip that happened to land wrong. It's a lopsided lean, two to one for Cleveland, that turned into a clean miss for the majority once the final whistle blew. The 6 who took New York were right; the 12 who took Cleveland were not.

## Prisco, Sullivan and the calls that got the margin right too

Picking the winner was only half the test. Five pundits also published a score projection for a Jets win: [Pete Prisco](/pundits/pete-prisco) (Jets 20-16), [Tyler Sullivan](/pundits/tyler-sullivan) (Jets 24-20), [Gennaro Filice](/pundits/gennaro-filice) (Jets 24-21), [Seth Walder](/pundits/seth-walder) (Jets 20-17) and [Jeremy Pargo](/pundits/jeremy-pargo) (Jets 19-17). New York actually won by 5, so every one of them undersold the final margin, but Prisco's and Sullivan's calls landed closest, just a point off the home margin, and both graded out at 97.62 accuracy with a +13.23 skill score. Filice and Walder weren't far behind at 95.24 accuracy and +8.99 skill, and Pargo's call still cleared +4.75 skill.

![Every Jets call undershot New York's final margin](/posts/visuals/898f1d55-d808-4585-b92b-fcffb249cf22.png)

Two pundits also called the Jets to win outright without a score attached: [Connor Rogers](/pundits/connor-rogers) ("Jets win in cover. Jets, I think, win by three points.") and [Ralph Vacchiano](/pundits/ralph-vacchiano), who flagged this as a winnable spot for New York as far back as September 29. Both graded 100 accuracy and a flat 0 skill score, because picking the home team is the no-skill default the site measures everyone against. Beating that default is exactly what the score-callers above did by also nailing the margin, and it's why a correct score pick on the road side or a tight home-margin guess is worth more here than one more "Jets win" with no number attached.

The oddest line in the group belongs to Sullivan. Two days after his sharp 24-20 score call, in a separate piece on Week 5 upset candidates, he reversed himself: "What if the Browns are just good? ... it's the Jets defense that should be of central focus and possibly the reason for an upset." That later call is his most recent one on this game, so it's the one that puts him on the Browns side of the split above, and it graded 0 accuracy with a -178 skill score. Same reporter, three days apart, one of the field's better calls and one of its worst.

## Cleveland's backers, by the numbers

The 7 pundits who both picked the Browns and put a score on it, [Bobby Kownack](/pundits/bobby-kownack) (21-19), [Brooke Cersosimo](/pundits/brooke-cersosimo) (20-18), [Dan Parr](/pundits/dan-parr) (19-17), [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) (20-17), [Eric Moody](/pundits/eric-moody) (21-17), [Jordan Dajani](/pundits/jordan-dajani) (17-13) and [Pamela Maldonado](/pundits/pamela-maldonado) (21-17), missed the actual home margin by 7 to 9 points apiece and graded between 42.86 and 47.62 accuracy, each with a skill score between -75.77 and -84.25.

The plain winner picks on Cleveland fared no better. [Chris Long](/pundits/chris-long) said "Browns winning four straight." [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman) said "I think they find a way to win this game. They got some momentum." [Mitchell Eisenstein](/pundits/mitchell-eisenstein) kept it short: "Give me Cleveland as well." [Lance Riesland](/pundits/lance-riesland) went furthest, calling it "a very winnable game" he expected Cleveland to win "by 10 points in my opinion, at least." All four graded 0 accuracy and a -178 skill score; Cleveland lost by 5, the opposite direction of Riesland's 10-point call.

## What this did and didn't change about their records

A few of these pundits have enough of a track record to say what Sunday did to it. Prisco's score-prediction skill score sits at +15.29 across 90 graded calls on the season, so his +13.23 here is right in his usual range, a solid week rather than an outlier. Sullivan's score calls average +17.56 across 59 graded calls, meaning his Jets 24-20 hit still landed a bit below his typical mark, even as his outcome-pick category, which normally runs a modest +4.04 across 25 graded calls, absorbed a -178 hit from the Browns-upset call that overruled it. Breech's numbers run a steadier, less flattering line: his game-score calls average only +2.00 skill across 90 graded picks and his outcome calls average -21.37 across 35, so Sunday's -80.01 score miss on Cleveland sits inside a category where he's already below average rather than marking any kind of change in direction.

## Beyond Sunday: what these clubs' season calls look like now

Before the season, calls on these two teams ran pessimistic across the board. [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) had the Jets at 4-13, [Moe Moton](/pundits/moe-moton) had them at 5-12, and [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) was the optimist of the bunch at 6-11; a Week 5 home win over Cleveland makes the low end look sharper and the high end a little less of a stretch. Cleveland's preseason calls were bleaker still, with Wright at 4-13 and Moton at 3-14, but more recent in-season projections had the Browns trending up, including Breech's simulation two days before this game that had them reaching eight wins and Bill Simmons putting "roughly nine" on the table given their remaining schedule. A loss at the Jets doesn't rule either of those out, but it's one more game Cleveland now has to make up somewhere else.

The full set of calls on both clubs is on their team pages, [Jets](/nfl/teams/jets) and [Browns](/nfl/teams/browns), and the season-long [leaderboard](/nfl/leaderboard) shows where this week's winners and losers rank overall.