Two Pundits Cash In on the Same Aaron Rodgers Call | MissedTakes Weekly

Two names share the marquee for the week of September 14–20: Kyle Brandt took the MissedTakes Score award, and Tom Pelissero took the Accuracy award. Both wins came from small samples — two and three graded calls, respectively — so read them as a good week, not a new baseline for either guy.

Brandt's two calls that graded out this week averaged a perfect 100 accuracy, and the one of the two with a computed skill score posted the maximum: 200, worth double what a purely lucky call could earn against the site's naive baseline. The other call had no separate skill figure to average — mock draft picks with only one player attached don't generate one — so the 200 stood alone as his week's MissedTakes Score.

The calls themselves:

• Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers. Back on March 27, 2025, long before it was consensus, Brandt insisted "the thing is still going to [happen] until Rodgers becomes a Steeler." The naive read was that Rodgers, then a Jet, stays put — he didn't, and Brandt had called the destination. Graded 100 accuracy, 200 skill.
• Cam Ward, No. 1 overall. In an April 2025 mock, Brandt said it "starts at one with Cam Ward, the best player in the draft" — which is exactly where Tennessee took him. Graded 100 accuracy.

Pelissero's week leaned on the same Rodgers call. Back in May 2025 he said he could "feel very strongly" that Rodgers was ending up in Pittsburgh — same 100 accuracy, same 200 skill score Brandt got for the identical prediction, made from a different show two months later. He paired it with two more hits: he had Adam Thielen landing with Minnesota when Thielen was still on Carolina's roster (100 accuracy, 200 skill), and he had Ashton Jeanty going in the top ten of the 2025 draft — Jeanty went sixth (100 accuracy, 50 skill). Three calls, three hits, 100 average accuracy for the week.

How each pundit stacks up overall

Neither man's week is out of character with a strong record, though the two profiles look different. Pelissero's full tracked record runs 80.15 accuracy and a MissedTakesScore of 25.23 across 31 graded calls — his best type by volume is mock draft picks (90.25 accuracy on 13 graded calls), which fits a beat built on locker-room sourcing rather than hot-take projection.

Brandt's record is broader and choppier: 55.57 accuracy and a MissedTakesScore of 14.57 across 104 graded calls and 30 articles. He's strong on playoff-berth calls (78.33 accuracy on 27 graded) and division winners (62.5 accuracy, but a MissedTakesScore of 102 on 20 graded calls — division winners pay well when you beat the "repeat the incumbent" baseline). He's been rougher on award picks, where he's 0-for-9 graded so far, and on one-off game outcomes, where a single Cowboys-over-Eagles upset call cost him a full -200 skill swing back in August grading.

The week in graded results

Beyond the two award winners, the site graded 635 takes over the past seven days, the bulk of them Game Outcome Picks (193) and Trade and Signing Calls (153), with Score Predictions (131), Depth Chart Calls (68) and Mock Draft Picks (43) filling out the rest. Season Win Totals and Fantasy Defense Calls stayed thin, as expected between the draft cycle and the regular season proper.

The best-graded calls of the week were clean sweeps — Bradley Locker's roster-bubble list, Bill Huber's early-season Packers forecast, Dave Uram's Eagles-opener call, Brendon Nelson's Sam Darnold-injury scenario for Seattle, and Richard Sherman's full slate of Week 1 picks all graded 100 accuracy and the maximum 200 skill score.

The worst-graded calls came almost entirely out of Depth Chart territory: an unsigned FantasyPros waiver column and Pat Fitzmaurice's Week 2 waiver-wire column both graded 0 accuracy and -200 skill, alongside missed depth-chart calls from Bill Huber on the Packers' rookie class and blown season/game forecasts from Aniello Piro on the Broncos and David Harrison on the Commanders — all zeroed out against the field's naive baseline.

On the longer-running consensus side, the field's collective 2025 win-total projections still show a wide miss on Kansas City, whom pundits collectively projected 6.3 wins too high across 13 calls, while New England, Seattle and Denver were each undersold by 5 wins on average. None of that moved this week, but it's the backdrop against which any single week's hot hand — Brandt's or Pelissero's — has to be judged.