49ers 27, Rams 7: Six Voices Took the Road Dog in Melbourne, Twenty Took the Chalk

San Francisco beat Los Angeles 27-7 in Melbourne to open the 2026 season. That result settled 37 calls we had on the board — 30 straight-up winner picks and seven score predictions — and the field had leaned hard the other way.

The verdict on the field

Twenty of the 30 winner picks went to the Rams. Ten went to San Francisco. Six of the seven score predictions had Los Angeles winning, and the one that didn't was the only score call in the set that got the winner right.

That two-to-one lean was devastating, because the Rams were the default pick. Our skill number asks whether a pick beat the naive answer — here, the home team — and the naive answer was Los Angeles. Picking the Rams and losing costs nothing against that baseline; it also earns nothing. Everyone who took Los Angeles scored zero accuracy and zero skill. Everyone who took San Francisco got the maximum on both: 100 accuracy, a skill mark of +200.

The calls we’re calling out

John Middlekauff made the most direct version of the argument. "But I think the 49ers won the game. I do. ... So 49ers to win the game. Yes," he said in his Australia-game preview, reasoning from San Francisco's long acclimation trip and Kyle Shanahan's edge over Sean McVay. That is the highest-value shape of call this site grades: the road side, stated plainly, against the number.

Tyler Sullivan flagged the Niners at +3.5 in a CBS Sports list of Week 1 upset candidates: "But don't sleep on the Niners either. ... Kyle Shanahan has also typically gotten his team up for the opener, winning three-straight Week 1 contests entering 2026." Mike Kadlick and Eva Geitheim both had San Francisco on their full 16-game Week 1 slates. Nick Winkler went further, picking the 49ers to sweep the season series: "I have them winning both games against the Rams this year. Super team? Come on. Bring it to Levi's." Eric Crocker took San Francisco too.

Those six were explicitly on the Melbourne game. The other four 49ers calls came inside season-long schedule walkthroughs from pundits who also had the Rams winning this one, so their credit here is split.

The score predictions

Richard Sherman was the only one of seven to call the winner: "I got San Francisco 24-27, or 27-24" — right team, San Francisco's 27 on the nose, and a three-point margin against an actual 20. It graded 59.5, comfortably the best score call on the game.

The rest all had the Rams. Note that the grade weighs the whole scoreline, not just the winner, which is why Mike Florio's 24-13 — a low-scoring game, wrong side — beat Pete Prisco's 28-27, which had the right neighborhood on the 49ers' number and nothing else.

The misses

Veejay Huskey had the margin and the direction exactly backwards: "They're going to beat them by 20 points. They're going to beat the Niners by 20 points." San Francisco won by 20.

Jason McIntyre took the Rams twice in the same week and said why: "I'm going with the Rams here, favored by three and a half, mostly because I don't know who's going to play for the Niners." Mike Renner was the most emphatic back in May: "I think the Rams minus two and a half against the forty niners is one where I just think they are so much better of a team this year... For all those reasons, I love the Rams in this one." Chris Brockman said the Niners "don't have the best vibes going right now, so I'd be surprised" if the Rams lost. Albert Breer, Conor Orr, Gilberto Manzano, Mitch Goldich, John Pluym, Matt Verderame, Rich Eisen, John Breech and O'Shea Jackson Jr. all had the Rams as well.

What the records say

Middlekauff's game picks were already his best category before this one: across 106 graded calls he sits at 60.5 accuracy overall, but on straight-up game outcomes he's at 73.8 accuracy with a skill mark of +45.2 over 10 graded picks. This extended a real strength rather than starting one.

McIntyre's overall record is respectable — 58.1 accuracy across 88 graded calls — but game picks are where he leaks. Over 36 graded winner calls his skill mark is −10.5, meaning that as a group those picks have landed slightly below what you'd get from just taking the home team every week. Two more zeroes here fit that pattern.

Sherman is the interesting case. On September 1 he said the Rams had the edge in this game; eight days later he wrote down San Francisco 27-24. The winner pick graded zero, the score call graded 59.5, and his score predictions now sit at 73.8 accuracy over six graded — his sharpest category. Sullivan, for the record, is new to us: two graded calls total, so his hit here is a data point, not yet a track record.

What it touches next

We have 24 open win-total calls on the Rams and 16 on the 49ers, and this result pushes against most of the loud ones. Chris Brockman had Los Angeles undefeated into the Week 16 Seahawks game; Bucky Brooks floated Matthew Stafford topping off an unbeaten season; John Breech had the Rams 14-3 and the NFC's top seed. All of those now need 17 straight or close to it. On the other side, Winkler's 12-5 and Crocker's "about 11 wins" for San Francisco both start 1-0, while Nick Wright has the 49ers third in the West at 8-9 and McIntyre said they "might win eight or nine." Seventeen games left to sort that out.

Full ledgers: the Rams and 49ers team pages, and the leaderboard.