I used to sit in Ollie Simmonds's basement every August with a legal pad and a nomination order, watching grown men pay $125 for Aaron Rodgers because somebody's wife had made chili and the room got reckless. That was 2013. The league has since migrated to an app that beeps at you, and I'm told the kids call keeper math 'value.' I call it something else: a way to avoid the one true test of a fantasy manager, which is standing in a room and bidding on a player with your own two hands. Some of you have forgotten how to do that. This preview is for the twelve who still have to.
Start at the top, because the standings don't lie. Evan Sinn's 4th and 20 went 11-3 last year, the best record in the league. Sinn owns the best career overall winning percentage of any regular in this league's history — John Penney still holds the regular-season crown, for what it's worth, but overall is overall — and two rings already sit on the shelf. For 2026 he has declared exactly zero keepers. None. He is letting Jahmyr Gibbs, a $77 keeper price, walk back into the pool along with Jayden Daniels and Drake London. That is either the boldest move of the offseason or a man who'd rather buy his team than inherit it. Either way, he walks into the auction with all $200 in his pocket, and I respect that kind of nerve.
Nick Inman's TacoDreams — and yes, we're doing the team names column again, TacoDreams remains a login pretending to be a mascot — posted the second-best all-play record in the league at 109-45 last year (only Justin Waitt's Diamond Dogs, see below, ran hotter) and still finished 10-4, one game back. Inman kept Bucky Irving at $31, locked up Nico Collins and Puka Nacua, and remains this league's other ringless finalist by trade — a single career runner-up finish and no trophy to show for it. He has been to a mountain nobody remembers him climbing.
Justin Waitt's Diamond Dogs are the team the spreadsheet crowd will tell you got unlucky, and for once I'll agree with them, because the number doesn't need a laptop to read: 118-36 all-play, the best mark in the league, buried inside a 9-5 record and a league-worst luck delta of -0.123. Points-against is destiny, folks, and Waitt has been paying a tax he didn't earn. He's kept DeVonta Smith at $36, Trey McBride at $41 and Jaxon Smith-Njigba at $44, committing real money to that trio before the auction gavel even drops — and left Josh Allen and, more curiously, a $53 Ashton Jeanty sitting in the player pool for the taking. Camp reports have Jeanty humming under new play-caller Klint Kubiak. Waitt just handed him to whoever's paying attention.
Which brings us to Ben Cunnion, a three-time champion by the archive's own count, with rings from 2020 and 2024 sitting right there in the record book. His bcunnion finished fourth last year at 8-6, with a -0.052 luck delta that's hardly the smoking gun I'd like it to be — I remain suspicious on principle regardless of what the number says. He kept Amon-Ra St. Brown at $61 and Quinshon Judkins at $24, which tells you he's building around volume this time, not variance.
Brian Jones, meanwhile, remains the most wronged man in this league's history, a point I will make every single week until somebody fixes it. Three runner-up finishes on his ledger, one championship back in 2017 with Vandelay Industries — so no, he is not ringless, don't let anyone tell you otherwise — but the math on three seconds and one first is not math a man should have to live with. His Cameron Crazies enter 2026 with only one declared keeper, De'Von Achane at $42, which either means he's got a plan or he forgot to fill out the form.
Trent Harley's team is now called I Paid $16 For Jennings, a name that ages worse by the year since Jauan Jennings now costs him $26 to keep. Harley's roster also carries the single most expensive tag on the entire board: Bijan Robinson at $79, fresh off a hold-in and a three-year deal worth up to $75 million that made him the highest-paid running back in NFL history. But Harley didn't declare him — his three keeper slots went to Jennings, Travis Etienne and Josh Downs — which means the highest-paid back in the sport goes right back into the auction pool for somebody else to buy. Back in my day we started our studs. This year, somebody else gets to.
Ollie Simmonds is still this league's other ringless finalist, and his 2026 roster — now dubbed Sir, TheyHitThe2ndBowers — kept Brock Bowers and George Pickens, a top-heavy build for a man who's finished 6-8 or worse in recent memory. Kevin Jones, a three-time champion who somehow slid to 6-8 last year, kept Rashee Rice, Cam Skattebo and Colston Loveland but let Kenneth Walker's $47 price tag and Jeremiyah Love walk. Ryan Weaver's Joe Buck Yourself posted a nightmare 49-105 all-play mark and still went 6-8 on pure puff of luck — a +0.11 delta that should worry him more than it seems to.
Ryan El Masri's ArabMamba6 is on my team-names list for the obvious reason, and as one of this league's newest arrivals he hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt regardless of his 2024 auction aggression on Bijan Robinson. John Penney, the leader in regular-season wins among this league's current managers, kept Ja'Marr Chase and Chase Brown for a combined $105 and remains criminally underrated given a resume that includes a title in 2021. And Elliott Simmonds, fresh off a league-worst 4-10 in 2025 with his newly renamed All Gas No Drakes, declared no keepers at all — a full reset for a manager who's already got a title sitting on the mantle.
My pick: Justin Waitt. A man who out-played his record by that much doesn't stay unlucky forever, and he's spent real money proving he knows it. Cunnion's three rings say don't bet against him. I'll believe it when the all-play column agrees with him.