Los Angeles Rams 2026 Coverage Report: 21 Straight Playoff Calls Right, 17 Straight Super Bowl Calls Wrong

The Rams are not a team our tracked outlets ignore. They are close to the most-covered team in the database, and the record they leave behind has a very clear shape: everybody knew this team was good, nobody could tell you what that goodness would turn into.

One caveat up front, and only once: everything below measures the outlets MissedTakes tracks, not all football media. A club can be a local-radio obsession and still be thin here.

Coverage: second-heaviest in the league

Across the whole database, the Los Angeles Rams carry 910 logged takes, 326 of them graded. That is second of 32 clubs in graded volume, behind only Kansas City's 389, and second in raw take count behind Buffalo's 1,013. The league median sits around 200 graded takes per club — the Giants have 199, the Buccaneers 202 — and the bottom of the board is Carolina at 120.

So the Rams get roughly 1.6 times the median club's graded attention, and 2.7 times Carolina's. That tracks with the results: 12-5 and a playoff berth in 2025, following 10-7 seasons in 2024 and 2023, under Sean McVay with Matthew Stafford at quarterback. Heavy coverage for a team that has made the playoffs in four of the past five seasons is not a distortion.

The quality is above average too. Rams takes grade at 64.1 average accuracy and +42.18 average skill delta — better than league heavyweights like the Chiefs (43.1 accuracy, +3.04 skill) and the Ravens (29.9, -0.57). Predicting the Rams has been an easier living than predicting most of the league.

The cutdown: 72 calls, one grade

This is where the series' news hook runs into a wall, so here it is plainly: the Rams have 72 roster-spot calls on file and exactly one of them is graded. Nothing from the 2026 preseason cycle has landed a grade yet, and site-wide there were zero takes graded in the last seven days. There are no cutdown surprises to award or punish here, because the surprises have not been scored.

That is not a Rams problem. Roster-spot calls are the least-graded type across the league: Cleveland leads with 8 graded, and 12 of the 20 clubs with any roster-spot calls have two or fewer. Buffalo has 332 such calls and one grade.

What is on file for the Rams is a well-specified set of pending claims, which is exactly what you want before a grading run:

• An unsigned PFF preseason recap by Nathan Jahnke, Aug. 30: "sixth-round rookie CJ Daniels will only make the roster if the Rams keep seven wide receivers." Jahnke also called Xavier Smith's spot secure on Aug. 24.
• Blaine Grisak, Aug. 16, published a full 53-man projection — three quarterbacks (Stafford, Stetson Bennett, Ty Simpson), four backs, five receivers, nine offensive linemen — plus the call that Dean Connors is "likely a practice squad candidate." On Aug. 24 he added that "it's going to be very difficult for the Rams to keep Wesley Bailey off the roster."
• Daniel Jeremiah, Aug. 19, on the quarterback room: "I would be of the idea of let's keep three... I would lean towards three."

The one graded Rams roster call is 19 months old and instructive about how this site scores. John Middlekauff said in February 2025 that cutting Cooper Kupp was inevitable: "you can't even eat enough money to trade him... this guy usually gets released." It graded 100 accuracy and 0 skill — the naive baseline ("he was on somebody's 53 last season") produced the same answer, so the call earned nothing over doing no work at all.

What the graded record actually shows

Strip out the ungraded pile and the Rams' 326 grades sit mostly in four buckets.

Weekly games are where pundits did their best work. Game-outcome picks on the Rams: 89 graded, 81.6 average accuracy, +52.47 skill. The single richest vein was Week 6 of 2025 at Baltimore, where the naive pick was the Ravens and the Rams won 17-3. Gregg Rosenthal got +172 for "I feel better about the Rams just winning this game... all they have to do all day is just hand the ball off." Nick Wright (+172) took "Rams minus seven and a half at Baltimore... the Ravens are a mess." Rich Eisen, Colin Cowherd and Cynthia Frelund landed the same game.

The season-long calls are the embarrassment. Playoff-berth picks on the Rams are 21-for-21, 100 accuracy — and worth almost nothing, +9.52 average skill, because the naive baseline usually said the same. Division-winner calls: 18 graded, 11.1 average accuracy. Eisen in March 2025 said the "NFC West Rams division to lose in 2025. I totally agree. I absolutely totally agree" — graded 0. Super Bowl picks on the Rams: 17 graded, 0.0 average accuracy, zero skill on every one. Seattle won it. Nick Shook in December: "I believe I might have ended with book it. That's how confident I am in the Rams right now." Wright in late January: "I think this is the Rams year." Simon Hunter in July: "it would still be this Rams team to win the Super Bowl."

The pattern is consistent: right that the Rams were a playoff team, wrong every time it required naming them the best one.

Awards were the profitable exception. Player-award calls on the Rams grade at 67.6 accuracy with +76.82 skill across 34 grades, and the reason is Stafford, who won 2025 MVP off 26 of 100 tracked ballots. Brandon Anderson had him in July 2025 at long odds: "Stafford is a fifty to one MVP ticket is a ticket worth investing in for once" — 100 accuracy, +200 skill, against a naive baseline of Josh Allen repeating. Not every award swing hit: Jourdan Rodrigue's "Jared Verse has a real shot" at Defensive Player of the Year graded 0, with Myles Garrett winning.

Fantasy calls on Rams players also cashed, though on small samples — 7 graded sleeper calls at 100 accuracy, 7 bust calls at 71.4. Derek Brown hit +200 three separate times fading Kyren Williams at an RB1 price ("I hate the ADP, I hate the rank on him"); Williams finished RB8 against an RB6 bar.

Who has a named record here

Sixteen pundits clear five graded Rams takes. Three clear 25:

Below that it thins out fast — Chris Brockman and Rosenthal at 10 graded, Kyle Crabbs at 10, then a cluster of five- and six-take records. Locked On Rams, the club's dedicated podcast presence in our set, has 11 graded takes at 24.4 accuracy; that is a real number but far too small a sample to rank anyone on, and we won't.

The honest summary: 910 takes, second-most in the league, and the graded portion tells you our sources read the Rams' floor correctly and their ceiling not at all. The cutdown verdict is still pending — 71 of 72 roster calls, waiting on a grading run. Check the predictions index when it lands.