# Nothing Graded All Week, 435 New Takes Filed, and September's Skill Trough | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-09-03 — MissedTakes*

Nothing was graded this week. Zero takes settled in the last seven days, while 435 new ones came in. The board is running as pure intake right now: the 2026 season hasn't produced a result to check anything against, and the pile of unsettled claims keeps growing.

That makes today a good day to look at what is being filed, and at what happened the last time a September pile like this one got graded.

## What came in

The takes logged on September 2 are the standard week-one genre. Douglas Clawson filed a bundle on the Bears — [Caleb Williams](/nfl/players/caleb-williams) for 4,000 yards, [D'Andre Swift](/nfl/players/d-andre-swift) for 1,000, and 1,000-yard seasons for [Rome Odunze](/nfl/players/rome-odunze), [Luther Burden III](/nfl/players/luther-burden-iii) and [Colston Loveland](/nfl/players/colston-loveland). Jason La Canfora predicted [Lamar Jackson](/nfl/players/lamar-jackson) plays out a lame-duck year rather than negotiate in season. [Joe Marino](/pundits/joe-marino) ran [Bills defensive superlatives](/opinions/728e041b-5c33-4845-85a2-b526fe01a73f) — Deone Walker as breakout, [Ed Oliver](/nfl/players/ed-oliver) as comeback, [Christian Benford](/nfl/players/christian-benford) as the No. 1 corner.

Those are three of the four types that dominate the unsettled backlog, and they grade very differently from one another.

- [Depth Chart Calls](/predictions/depth-chart): 3,861 filed, 415 graded. Graded ones average 93.5 accuracy — and a skill delta of just **+1.82**. Almost all of that accuracy is available to anyone reading a depth chart.
- [Roster Spot Calls](/predictions/roster-spot): 2,365 filed, 49 graded. 81.6 accuracy, skill delta **−4.08**. Right most of the time, and still worse than the naive baseline.
- [Sleeper Calls](/predictions/fantasy-sleeper): 2,251 filed, 308 graded, 52.6 accuracy.
- [Player Season Numbers](/predictions/player-season-stat): 1,061 filed, 143 graded, 35.8 accuracy — the kind of claim Clawson's Bears bundle is made of.

## Last September graded out at 40.1

The clearest warning about the current pile is the last one. Takes claimed in September 2025 — 946 of them, 887 now graded — average **40.1 accuracy and a skill delta of +2.84**. That is the worst skill month of the past year other than July 2025 (−0.36), and it sits well below the draft-season months: March 2026 at +40.93, April 2026 at +38.99.

![Average skill delta by claim month](/posts/visuals/27c9428a-bdf8-426f-8306-ca0b60668f99.png)

The [lead-time splits](/methodology) point the same way. [Division Winners](/predictions/division-winner) called four to eight months out average 24 accuracy across 253 graded calls; the same claim inside four months averages 49 over 63. [Award Picks](/predictions/player-award) at four to eight months out average 6 across 191 graded calls, against 46 for the 107 filed inside six weeks. Season-opening picks are the hardest thing anyone here does, and they arrive in bulk.

![The week in one line](/posts/visuals/95008b6d-8370-459f-afcf-feb6e404e6ca.png)

## The consensus, checked

The 2025 win-total ballots are the cleanest record of where the field went wrong as a group. Thirteen pundits put a number on Kansas City; the Chiefs won six, and the field was 6.3 games too high. New England (11 calls), Seattle (7) and Denver (6) each finished five games above where the field put them.

![2025 season win totals: how far the field missed](/posts/visuals/80236794-9510-4137-b999-9740284b153c.png)

The field was not wrong everywhere. On Buffalo (12 actual) and New Orleans (6) the collective miss was 0.2 games; Atlanta 0.4, Minnesota 0.3. The failures cluster on teams whose direction changed, not on teams whose level was hard to pin down.

On the [award ballots](/predictions/player-award), 26 of 100 MVP picks landed on Matthew Stafford, the winner — the field's best collective hit. Offensive Rookie of the Year split 29 ways with Tetairoa McMillan taking just five, tied with Ashton Jeanty. Myles Garrett drew 6 of 18 Defensive Player of the Year picks, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba 7 of 20 for Offensive Player of the Year.

No pundit logged a documented change of mind this week — nothing on the board where someone reversed a call they had already filed.

## Where the board stands

With nothing graded, the [leaderboard](/leaderboard) is unchanged. [David Harrison](/pundits/david-harrison) leads at 48.77 with 68.33 accuracy over 131 graded takes, ahead of [Lance Zierlein](/pundits/lance-zierlein) (43.01, 37 takes) and [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) (35.62, 114). Nine of the top ten still carry a limited-confidence flag; [Daniel Jeremiah](/pundits/daniel-jeremiah), ninth at 23.05 with 277 graded takes, is the only established record up there. [Marcus Mosher](/pundits/marcus-mosher) has the top accuracy in the ten at 80.31.

That ordering will start moving as soon as games produce results. Until then, the 435 takes filed this week are just claims.