# Nothing Graded in Seven Days, 9,555 August Claims Waiting, and the Chiefs Consensus Still Hurts | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-09-02 — MissedTakes*

The grading queue produced nothing this week. Zero takes settled in the last seven days. Meanwhile the site logged 348 new ones, and the month behind them is the largest unsettled pile the database has held: **9,555 predictions carry an August 2026 claim date, and seven of them have been graded.**

That ratio — seven out of 9,555 — is the whole story of early September. Punditry front-loads. Grading waits for football.

![The August backlog](/posts/visuals/ab283cc9-31ae-4773-b6a5-2afdf0151fe6.png)

## The seven that did settle were old homework

All seven graded August claims were draft calls, and several were settled against drafts that finished years ago. [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) calling [Fernando Mendoza](/nfl/players/fernando-mendoza) a first-round prospect scored 100 — Mendoza went first overall. [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) had the same pick at No. 1 for the same 100. George Kritikos scored 100 on [Trevor Lawrence](/nfl/players/trevor-lawrence) going first to the [Jaguars](/nfl/teams/jaguars) — graded against the 2021 draft. On the other end, Benjamin Solak's read that Spencer Rattler would rise to "the clear top spot in this draft class" graded 0.23; Rattler went 150th.

Seven takes averaged 57.2 accuracy and a skill delta of **−12.09**, meaning the group came out worse than the naive baseline. Seven is not a sample. It is a rounding error with names attached. Don't read a trend into it.

## What's actually sitting in the queue

The newest entries are camp-cutdown material, which grades on usage rather than praise: roster spots, [depth chart calls](/predictions/depth-chart), waiver-claim guesses. Ed Kracz expects the [Eagles](/nfl/teams/eagles) to carry four quarterbacks. Trevor Ripley thinks [Max Brosmer](/nfl/players/max-brosmer) lands back on the [Vikings](/nfl/teams/vikings) practice squad. And [Mike Renner](/pundits/mike-renner) already has a 2027 first round mocked, with [Jeremiah Smith](/nfl/players/jeremiah-smith) to the [Cardinals](/nfl/teams/cardinals) at No. 2 — a call that cannot resolve for twenty months.

None of it moves a leaderboard yet. All of it is on the record.

## Consensus: the 2025 win totals are still the worst thing on file

With no fresh grades, the standing consensus data is where the accountability lives. The field's collective miss on 2025 win totals runs six wins deep at the top.

![Where the field collectively missed on 2025 win totals](/posts/visuals/ef6f58e0-3330-4927-8645-13452ff2ad3c.png)

Thirteen pundits put a number on Kansas City. The field landed 6.3 wins above what the Chiefs actually did. New England, Seattle and Denver went the other way by five apiece — the field was five wins too low on all three. That is not one bad pundit; that is everyone leaning the same direction at once, which is exactly what a consensus miss looks like.

The [win-total leaderboard](/predictions/season-win-total) is thin enough to be honest about: only four pundits clear the sample floor. [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) leads at 21.92 MissedTakes Score on 22 graded calls despite 43.33 accuracy — beating the baseline matters more than being close. [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) has the most volume, 50 graded, and sits at −10.42, below naive. [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) is at −2.52 on 18 calls, against a 62.2 accuracy and 15.35 score across his 484 graded takes overall.

## No reversals logged — but the numbers wobble anyway

Nobody was flagged for changing their mind this week; the changed-their-mind feed is empty. What the consensus file does show is spread inside a single pundit. Eisen has five separate Chiefs win-total calls on record for 2025: 10, 12, 10, 15 and 15. Wright has four: 12, 13, 12, 12. Those aren't graded as flip-flops, but the range tells you something about how firm a "prediction" is when it gets restated weekly on air.

The award ballots are the counterweight. On MVP, 26 of 100 picks went to Matthew Stafford, and Stafford won — the plurality was right. Offensive Rookie of the Year went the other way: Tetairoa McMillan won with five of 29 picks, tied with Ashton Jeanty at the top of a scattered field. One award the room converged on and nailed; one it essentially coin-flipped.

![2025 MVP ballot: the plurality was right](/posts/visuals/719d92a2-253b-4b9c-bdf7-f9d14c80af64.png)

Nothing on the [leaderboard](/leaderboard) moved this week, because nothing could. David Harrison still holds the top line at 48.77 on 131 graded takes. Check back once games start settling the 9,555.