Before we price the keeper board, we have to close the books on 2025 honestly, because the confetti-based accounts you may have read elsewhere on this site were written by a historian and a poet, and neither of them checked the residuals.
The audit. Evan Sinn went 11-3. Evan Sinn also went 73-81 in all-play — meaning that against the full league each week, the league's one-seed was, obviously, a losing team. His luck number, +0.312, is the largest I have ever had to type in this space, nearly triple that of the league's second-luckiest team (Ryan Weaver, +0.110, and Weaver still only managed 6-8, which tells you something about the floor he was luckying up from). The best team in the league by all-play was Justin Waitt's Diamond Dogs at 118-36 — a genuinely elite 14-week performance — and Waitt finished third. Nick Inman's 109-45 was second-best; he lost the final. Ben Cunnion? 96-58, third by all-play, 8-6 by record, champion by coin flip tournament. I congratulate him on winning three consecutive weighted lotteries — 161.56, 162.96, 152.88, all real, all irrelevant to the question of who the best team was. The Fraud Watch does not care about jewelry. Sinn remains chairman. Cunnion remains a member in good standing, now with tenure.
(The obligatory John Penney paragraph: 5-9 last season, and obviously still the best pure manager this league has produced — most career wins in the archive at 104-87, three scoring titles. Variance is not a character flaw. It just votes like one.)
Now. Keeper season. The rules, for the three of you who need them re-explained annually: each franchise keeps up to three players, priced at last year's auction cost plus ten dollars, eleven for the undrafted, against a two-hundred-dollar budget. The full priced board for all twelve rosters is live on the Keepers page — a genuine civilizational upgrade over the era when these prices circulated as screenshots — and I have now read all of it, so that you don't have to, although you should, because the mistakes being incubated over there deserve witnesses.
The five best contracts in the league, in order:
- Brock Purdy, $11 (Sinn). An undrafted-priced starting quarterback. This is the single largest arbitrage on the board and it belongs, obviously, to the man who needs luck least — he has a surplus.
- Caleb Williams, $11 (Weaver). Same shape, higher variance, and Weaver also holds Jaxson Dart at $11. The quarterback shelf of that roster is the only part assembled by a sober person.
- Quinshon Judkins, $14 (Cunnion). Even the house wins one honestly now and then.
- Cam Skattebo, $19 (Kevin Jones). With Colston Loveland at $13 behind him. Kevin's board is quietly the best-priced in the league, which is how three-time champions behave between rings.
- Patrick Mahomes, $19 (Harley). Nineteen dollars. For context, his teammate CeeDee Lamb costs $69. One of these is a keeper. It is not the one the group chat will assume.
Honorable mentions, keep them and say nothing: Bucky Irving at $21 and Puka Nacua at $31 (Inman — yes, both, and I'll get to the trap on that roster in a moment), Brock Bowers at $25 (Ollie Simmonds), Emeka Egbuka at $31 (Cunnion), Ladd McConkey at $27 (Sinn), Drake Maye at $13 (Penney), Brandon Aiyuk at $13 (El Masri, the flier that costs nothing).
The traps, which someone will spring anyway:
Christian McCaffrey, $71 (Inman). The most expensive keeper on the board, attached to the most mileage. Inman's correct three — Irving $21, Nacua $31, Nico Collins $34 — is sitting right there, obvious to everyone except, I predict, Inman. He just watched a final end his season; sentiment is about to end his offseason.
Jahmyr Gibbs, $72 vs. Drake London, $55 (Sinn). Both elite. Both real. But this is an auction league with a two-hundred-dollar budget, and Purdy at $11 is already keeper one. The spreadsheet says you cannot hoard the entire top of your former roster and also bid on draft night. Something has to float back to the pool, and watching Sinn choose will be the offseason's best free entertainment.
Bijan Robinson, $75 (El Masri). The best player on the board at the price that ruins budgets. A defensible keep — barely — and obviously he'll keep him, because ArabMamba6 has never met a marquee name it could release. Josh Allen at $43 is the same roster's actually-correct luxury keep. They will both be kept, nothing else will fit, and I have already written next August's I-told-you-so. It stores well.
The age wing: Derrick Henry at $63 (Harley) and Saquon Barkley at $70 (Weaver) are prices for the players they were, and Travis Kelce at $20 (Inman) is a fair price for a player the position no longer describes. Justin Jefferson at $70 (Ollie) is the one big ticket I'd actually pay — receivers age on a different curve, and Ollie's alternative keeps (Bowers $25, Brian Thomas $32) make the math survivable. And Tyreek Hill at $45 (Elliott Simmonds) is listed without an NFL team on the roster page as of this writing, which is all the price analysis that situation requires.
Prediction, so it's on the record with a timestamp this year: Sinn's 11-3 regresses to the middle of the table — the all-play already lives there, the record just hasn't moved in yet. Waitt and Inman, first and second in all-play, are the correct 2026 favorites. And Cunnion's title defense fails, not because he's cursed but because he was never the favorite either time, a distinction the trophy case is structurally incapable of recording.
The numbers were never in question.