Rams President Kevin Demoff trolls Ryan Clark after wrong prediction

Ryan Clark spent Friday discrediting Peter Schrager as an NFL analyst because he never played in the league. By Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams’ president was throwing it right back at him.

Earlier this week, ESPN’s NFL Live panel made their picks for Rams-Texans. All four analysts — Clark, Marcus Spears, Hannah Storm, and Mina Kimes — picked Houston to win. The scores ranged from 17-14 to 24-17, but everyone was confident the Rams would start 0-1.

Then Kevin Demoff had the perfect response when his team made the analysts look foolish.

“I guess being an ex-player doesn’t help analysts make better picks,” the Rams president tweeted after his team beat Houston, with all four ESPN analysts picking against Los Angeles.

The tweet was aimed squarely at Ryan Clark, who had just finished lecturing Peter Schrager about the value of playing experience in media. Clark told Schrager, “that’s the non-player in you,” during their CeeDee Lamb debate on Get Up, basically saying former players understand football better than people who never suited up.

Clark’s point was that Schrager was focusing too much on stats (Lamb’s numbers compared to A.J. Brown’s) instead of understanding that Brown’s team won while Lamb’s dropped crucial passes. Fair enough. But Demoff’s tweet exposes the flaw in that logic.

If playing experience automatically makes someone a better analyst, why did Marcus Spears, Mina Kimes, Hannah Storm, and Ryan Clark all whiff on the same game? Two of those four are former NFL players, but they were just as wrong as the non-players.

The truth is that playing experience helps with certain things. Former players know what it’s like to get hit, to handle pressure, to deal with locker room politics. They can see things that people who never played might miss. Clark had a point there.

But predicting games? Understanding strategy? Evaluating talent? Those skills don’t necessarily correlate with how many tackles you made in the NFL. Some of the best football minds, like Mina Kimes, never played a down of professional football.

Which brings us back to Sunday’s results. The timing couldn’t have been better, at least from Demoff’s point of view. The Rams had just upset a favored Texans team, and here were four highly paid ESPN analysts — including the guy who just argued that ex-players are better analysts — all getting it wrong.

Clark probably won’t respond, and he shouldn’t. The tweet wasn’t mean-spirited, just pointing out that being wrong is an equal opportunity employer in the prediction business. Former players get things wrong just as often as everyone else.

The whole debate about ex-players versus non-players in the media misses the point anyway. Good analysis comes from preparation, intelligence, and understanding the game, not from whether you once got paid to play it. Some former players are great at breaking down film and explaining concepts. Others just coast on their playing credentials.

But when it comes to the predictions, everyone’s just guessing anyway. And being a former player doesn’t give you a crystal ball.