Baltimore Ravens 2026: The Coverage Report — 270 Graded Takes, the Worst Accuracy of Any Team

One post per club, after final cutdowns, on how the outlets MissedTakes tracks covered a team — measured against what happened. Today: the Baltimore Ravens.

One caveat up front, and only once: this measures the outlets in our database, not all football media. Local beat coverage, radio and everything we haven't ingested doesn't appear here.

The coverage baseline: heavily covered, badly graded

Baltimore is not an ignored team. Our database holds 563 Ravens takes, 270 of them graded — the sixth-largest graded pile in the league, against a league median of 207 graded takes per club. Only the Chiefs (389), Rams (326), Bills (309), Patriots (300) and Seahawks (277) have more resolved claims attached to them.

The problem isn't volume. It's what the volume produced.

Average accuracy on those 270 graded Ravens takes is 29.9 — the lowest figure of any team in the league. The next-lowest are the Lions at 35.0 and the Buccaneers at 37.8; the Seahawks sit at 75.0. Average skill delta, our measure against a naive baseline, is -0.57, 27th of 32. In plain terms: on the sixth-most-covered team in our sample, the field collectively did slightly worse than just assuming last year repeats.

The reason is in the team profile. Baltimore went 12-5 in 2024 and made the playoffs. In 2025 they went 8-9 and missed. Pundits kept writing the first team and grading against the second.

What the field actually predicted

Split the 270 by claim type and the collapse is concentrated in exactly the categories where Baltimore was picked to be great.

• Division Winners: 35 graded, 0.0 accuracy. Not one graded call landed.
• Conference Champions: 19 graded, 0.0 accuracy, average skill -21.63.
• Super Bowl Picks: 14 graded, 0.0 accuracy.
• Award Picks: 19 graded, 0.0 accuracy. For context, the site's 2025 MVP ballot had Lamar Jackson with 7 picks; Matthew Stafford won with 26.
• Playoff Picks: 34 graded, 17.6 accuracy.

The Super Bowl file reads like a single voice. Manti Te'o filed three separate Baltimore champion picks in September 2025 — "*the Baltimore Ravens, after twelve long years, will be Super Bowl champs*." Gregg Rosenthal: "*I too have the Baltimore Ravens winning the Super Bowl... over the Lions.*" Jonas Knox, LaVar Arrington, Steve Wyche and Patrick Claybon all had Baltimore lifting it. Shannon Sharpe, in November, was still there: "*I believe Lamar Jackson is going to get to a super Bowl.*" Seattle won it. Every one of those graded 0.

Win totals tell the same story with numbers attached. Six graded Ravens calls for 2025, against 8 actual wins:

Five of the six sat at 11 or higher; the six average 11.5. Nick Wright filed 12 twice (20 accuracy, -70 skill each). Brady Quinn had 12, Rosenthal had 12 — "*The Ravens over eleven and a half doesn't take a lot of guts*" — and Colin Cowherd had 11. The only one who came out ahead of the naive number was Danny Parkins, who took the under at 10: 60 accuracy, +10 skill, and the sole positive skill score in the group.

There is one category where covering Baltimore worked. Mock Draft Picks: 47 graded, 67.7 accuracy, +35.23 average skill — the best-graded claim type on this team by a wide margin. Daniel Jeremiah put Jordyn Tyson in the Ravens' first round and scored 100 (Tyson went 8th). Andrew Erickson nailed Olaivavega Ioane at 14, exactly. Kyle Crabbs had Malaki Starks to Baltimore at 27 in his final 2025 mock — actual pick 27. Predicting where the Ravens draft is a solved problem. Predicting how good they'll be is not.

The cutdown: 26 calls, 24 of them ungraded

This series' news hook is the 53-man roster, and here the honest answer is that the record is nearly empty. There are 26 Ravens roster-spot takes in the database and only 2 carry grades — both trivial, both scored against a baseline of 100 for zero skill: Rich Eisen saying Lamar Jackson would be back (accuracy 100, skill 0) and Rosenthal predicting Justin Tucker would never wear a Ravens uniform again (accuracy 100, skill 0).

The other 24 — every one of the actual cutdown-week calls — are pending. We can't tell you who was right yet, and won't pretend otherwise. What we can do is put the claims on the record now, before grading lands:

• Josh Reed (Ravens On SI) had undrafted tackle Diego Pounds narrowly missing the cut on August 29, "*with the team keeping only three offensive tackles*," and expected seventh-round guard Evan Beerntsen to be "*destined for the chopping block as a prime practice squad candidate*."
• Jason La Canfora on August 23 listed Kaimon Rucker, Dominic DeLuca, Ethan Burke, Amani Oruwariye and Gerad Lichtenhan as practice-squad keeps, and on QB Joe Fagnano: "*it would be pretty surprising if the Ravens weren't able to usher him right back to their practice squad.*"
• Spenny Powers, August 26, went the other way on Burke: "*His power, hand usage and frame should earn him a roster spot.*"
• Nathan Jahnke filed the same fourth-round-rookie logic on WR Elijah Sarratt three times in five days: "*likely to make the Ravens' roster given the investment Baltimore made in him.*"
• Reed's August 31 piece asserts both Fagnano and Burke made the initial 53 — which, if it grades out, puts Powers on the right side of the Burke split and La Canfora on the wrong one.

That's the whole cutdown file. Six writers, one team, and the grades still to come.

Who has a named record on Baltimore

Sixteen pundits clear five graded Ravens takes. The top of that list by volume:

Rosenthal has the best accuracy of anyone with double-digit graded Ravens takes (51.6 on 14) despite the Super Bowl pick — his game-outcome and personnel work carried it. Crabbs has the best skill number in the group, driven by mock drafts. Te'o's line is the starkest in the file: 15 graded Ravens claims, zero accuracy, all of them downstream of one belief about how good this team was.

Daniel Jeremiah (68.9 on 5) and Rich Hribar (51.2 on 5) grade better, but five takes is not a record, and we're not ranking anyone on it.

The summary for Baltimore is simple. Our outlets covered this team like a contender, at above-median volume, and the grades came back last in the league. The one thing they got right was where the Ravens would draft. See the methodology for how skill and accuracy are computed, and the leaderboard for how these names look across all 32 clubs.