The gavel — a metaphorical gavel, this is a Zoom auction, longtime readers know this — fell for the last time on pick 168 with Justin Waitt paying a dollar for Jayden Higgins, a wide receiver who is not going to play football in 2026. That is the correct closing image for any auction: the room whose biggest bid was Trent Harley paying $69 for Bijan Robinson ends with somebody spending a single dollar on a torn ACL. Both moves are, in their own way, what this league is for.
Let's start with the $69. Harley — one of the two newest names in the record book, alongside Ryan El Masri, both men still working with a fraction of the seasons the founding class has banked — put the single highest price of the 2026 board on Robinson, fresh off a hold-in at Falcons camp and a three-year deal that made him the highest-paid running back in NFL history. Kevin Stefanski wanted him to stop worrying about the business side. Harley clearly wasn't listening to Stefanski; he handed over more than a third of his budget for a running back who missed camp reps to negotiate his own extension. History will remember this, mostly because the archive says the actual record for a single auction acquisition is Ollie Simmonds's $125 on Aaron Rodgers back in 2013 — a figure that still stands untouched thirteen seasons later, and will for another year. Sixty-nine dollars is a Tuesday by comparison. But it's the top of this room, and Harley — team literally named after a $16 Jauan Jennings keeper — has never been afraid of a receipt he'll have to explain later.
Evan Sinn wasn't far behind, going $67 on Jahmyr Gibbs, who was himself holding in at Lions camp before flashing the thumbs-up that suggested a new deal was close. Sinn finished 2025 at 11-3, the best record in the league, and still walked away with nothing to show for it — a fact I will not spin into more than it is, because the archive also shows two championships on his ledger already. This is a two-time champion doubling down on a star, not a man chasing his first ring. Elliott Simmonds went $60 for CeeDee Lamb and turned around and spent another $43 on Justin Jefferson, committing over a hundred dollars to two wide receivers before he'd bought a single running back worth writing home about — Breece Hall at $20 and Jadarian Price at $19 is a running back room, not a strategy. And Nick Inman, fresh off the first final of his career — a final he lost to Ben Cunnion, the tragedy being that it took until 2025 to get there, not that he's never been close before — turned right back around and spent $59 on Christian McCaffrey. Say what you want about the man's win percentage. He does not draft like someone who just got his heart broken.
The reigning champion, meanwhile, ran his board like a man defending something. Cunnion kept Amon-Ra St. Brown at $51 and Quinshon Judkins at $14, then went out and bought James Cook for $56 — the sixth-biggest ticket in the entire room, though even that doesn't touch his own career high: the archive still has him paying $64 for Ezekiel Elliott back in 2021, the biggest single check he's ever written for a running back. Cunnion's title tally sits at three now, tied with Kevin Jones for the most in league history, a fact I will keep repeating until somebody breaks it or asks me to stop. Neither is likely to happen soon.
Speaking of Kevin Jones: the man SSPN's inflation-adjusted ledger crowned as the true money king of this league's history did not act like a king this week. Jones kept his three — Rashee Rice, Cam Skattebo, Colston Loveland — and then hunted bargains like a man who remembered how auctions actually work: Matthew Golden for $4, RJ Harvey for $5, Dak Prescott for $3, Stefon Diggs for $2. This is not the profile of a manager gun-shy about spending; it's the profile of one who has clearly figured out where the value dries up and refuses to pay retail past it. John Penney, for his part, kept faith with the team name and spent $58 to retain Ja'Marr Chase, holding onto Chase Brown at his $27 keeper price as well — Chase Greatness chasing exactly what it says on the tin, and then some, before rounding out the bench with Travis Kelce at $6 as a late-round nostalgia play.
The most interesting non-decision belonged to Brian Jones. He had a full shelf of cheap keepers available to him — Garrett Wilson at $42, Jaylen Waddle at $40, Ladd McConkey at $41, Kyren Williams at $40 — and kept exactly one of them, De'Von Achane at $32. Then he went out and rebought nearly the same receiver room from scratch at auction: Wilson for $32, Waddle for $30, McConkey for $31, Williams for $30. It's the fantasy equivalent of selling your house to yourself. He finished $197 spent, the only manager in the room who didn't touch all $200 — three dollars left on the table, an oddity in a league where everyone else found a way to zero out.
And then there's Ryan El Masri, who arrived with no declared keepers at all — a blank sheet in a room full of protected rosters — and simply spent: $40 on Omarion Hampton, $38 on Saquon Barkley, $32 on Emeka Egbuka, $30 on Malik Nabers, $25 on Tee Higgins. No safety net, no discount, full retail on five different names. It is either the most honest way to build a team in this format or the most expensive, and we will find out which by December.
As for the Hall of Fame page — go read it, it is the finest thing this network produces — Ollie Simmonds and Inman remain the league's ringless finalists, and both spent this week like men building toward a different ending. Simmonds kept Brock Bowers and George Pickens for a combined $60 and then paid $39 for A.J. Brown, the largest bid of his entire auction. History will remember this, one way or another. It always does.